Marked for Death
by FicMirror
Summary: Welcome to Marked For Death, an AU Naruto-verse quest by and for the rational fiction crowd. Follow the story of a genin struggling to survive among a group of rogue ninja. The world is against him, hunter-nin are everywhere, and he forgot to bring his teddy bear, dammit. - To find the whole story, search "sufficient velocity marked for death" and click the first link.
1. Chapter 0: Out of the Mist

Hoster's Note: This is an in-progress story being rehosted. If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link. This story is rehosted with permission.

 _The Adventure Begins, by_ _Velorien_

 _Three weeks ago, you became a traitor._

 _The summons had come out of nowhere. After the series of unfortunate incidents that had you branded "disrespectful of authority", you'd been stuck with one D-rank mission after another, using your finely-honed skills to chop onions and stack boxes while your fellow genin battled brigands and infiltrated criminal associations. So when it seemed like the Powers That Be had finally forgiven you, and wanted you to be part of something important again, you jumped at the chance._

 _It was nothing like the missions you were used to. You were one of many genin on the mission, led by several chūnin, and even multiple jōnin. A powerful battle unit that would march into contested territory and end the region's biggest conflict once and for all. A dream come true for a genin afraid that their career was over before it had even begun._

 _But after a week's travel came the night when things went wrong. Raised voices coming from the commander's tent. The ring of steel on steel. Then, before any of you could get close, a brilliant flash of light that could only have been ninjutsu. After a second's silence, Shikigami-sensei emerged from the tent, covered in blood. The commander did not._

 _With the entire camp watching, it was too late for damage control, so Shikigami-sensei told you all the truth, and showed you the commander's documents. You discovered that you weren't a heroic strike force. You were a collection of problem ninja - some with histories of insubordination, others whose loyalty had come under question or who had shown excessive ambition... The details didn't matter. What mattered was that you were being led into a battle you couldn't win, your purpose to soften up the enemy before the real squads arrived and completed the mission. Your death sentences were already signed._

 _So all of you ran. It was a painful decision. It meant abandoning your friends and family. It meant giving up on countless hopes, ambitions and plans. But your village wanted you dead, and your other choices were to continue with the suicide mission, or to go back and face court martial for abandoning it._

 _Now you're a missing-nin. After three weeks on the run, you were able to find a safe place to make a longer-term base, with concealment on the level of a small ninja village. Your perimeter is secure for now, your supplies are adequate, and between your eighteen genin, your six chūnin and your three jōnin, you have a good range of skills and expertise. But your names are in the Bingo Book, and if your village considered you dangerous before, it will stop at nothing to find and destroy you now._

 _The clock is ticking. What path will you choose in order to survive?_


	2. Chapter 1: Into the Swamp

(Hoster's Note: Daily reminder that this story is originally on another site. To find it, search "Sufficient Velocity Marked for Death" and click the first link. Don't worry about the thread-style postings at first, you can just use "reader mode" or navigate by threadmarks at the top and bottom of each Author Post.)

* * *

Eternity is made up of moments, and so is a human life.

Hazou's earliest remembered moment, from before he knew his age: in his mother's arms, her smiling face looking down at him as she bounced him gently and made happy noises. Poppa stood behind her, arms around her waist and chin on her shoulder. He was quiet, his face calmer than hers, but all the joy in the world shone from his eyes.

When Hazou was two, he saw his mother getting out of the tub. The scars crisscrossed her body like lines on a map - a map of all the pain and hardship that is shinobi life.

"Ouch, momma!" he said. "Did those hurt?"

She smiled quietly and shrugged into her robe. "Yes, cricket," she said, using the pet name that always made him giggle. "But they were all worth it. I got those scars because I am a shinobi. Because I am a shinobi I met your father, and he is my heart. And because he is my heart, we had you."

It was at that moment that he knew he would become a shinobi, so that he could meet his own heart.

When he was three, poppa took him roof-running for the first time. He clung to his father's back, shrieking in glee as they raced at blinding speed across the rooftops. Poppa leapt between roofs like a joyful Monkey God, traveling in the blink of an eye from one to another. Sometimes he ran on the flat, sometimes he ran sideways on a wall, and once he hung upside down under the eaves of a tall building. Hazou's shirt flew up, baring his stomach, and he eeped in delight. His father laughed and slung him around in his arms so that he could blow a giant raspberry on the boy's stomach, drawing a giggling shriek.

When they got home momma scolded his father, wagging her finger at him. She didn't mean it though, and she laughed when poppa scooped her up and ran up the outside wall to sit on the roof. They didn't come down for a while, and when they did, momma's robe and hair were mussed and she was wearing a goofy smile.

When he was four and one-half, he and his parents sat in the garden under the branches of the plum tree. Poppa was making the mist dance, tiny dragons swirling and playing just to make the little boy laugh.

When he was five, a man in a formal uniform came to the house. He and momma sat in the outer room and talked quietly for several minutes. After he left, momma went into the bedroom and cried for an hour, quiet sobs that were just barely audible when Hazou pressed his ear to the door. Afterwards she came out and explained that poppa would not be coming home again.

It was at that moment that he knew he would become a shinobi, so that he could kill the man who kept his poppa from coming home.

When he was six, he begged his momma to let him apply to the Academy. She said no, he had to be eight. He begged and begged, and she still said no...but she took him into the garden and put a kunai in his hands.

"Stand like this," she said. "Strike up from underneath, through the stomach and into the heart."

He did it once and she corrected him. He did it again and she nodded in approval.

He did it perfectly from then on. Every time, he imagined that he was gutting the man who had taken his poppa away.

When he was eight, he joined the Academy. Momma's smile was complicated when she dropped him off at the gates - proud, but sad. He might have added "afraid", but his momma wasn't afraid of anything; things were afraid of her.

When he took his fourth taijutsu class, a man with grey hair and a scar stood on the sidelines, watching and frowning thoughtfully. The boy didn't know who the scarred man was, but sensei - a terrifying man who barked orders and brooked no backchat - spoke quietly and respectfully to him.

After that, the boy was pulled out of the class and moved into a different one, where he sparred with children a year older. Six months later, he was sparring with seniors. Two years later he was sparring only with instructors.

Countless moments: "Why, sensei?" "Sensei, wouldn't it make more sense like this?" "Sensei, that can't be right. Why would anyone..."

An equally countless number of moments: on his knees, scrubbing the stone floors of the Academy across which five hundred active children constantly tracked dirt. Or cleaning the kitchen grease trap. Or sweeping the chimneys.

For each chore, he learned the most efficient motions to complete it quickly, then did them perfectly.

When he was eleven, he came home to find momma sitting at the kitchen table, papers spread out around her and her face showing utter despair. She saw him and immediately smiled her perfect, happy smile.

"Hullo, cricket," she said. "How was school? What did you learn today?" He sat down beside her, babbling happily about the three ways to kill a man with a garotte and how he thought that the turn-and-throw method was much more efficient than the grapple-and-steady-pressure method that sensei recommended. After all, as long as you did the throw perfectly it was much faster. The whole time he was babbling, momma kept giving him her perfect smile and never once looked at the stack of bills with "OVERDUE" stamped across them in big red kanji.

Two weeks later, he bet one of the other students that he could make the impossible jump from the cliff to Mizukage Tower. He had practiced that jump hundreds of times before making the bet, the bruises and scrapes on his body the proof of it. It was worth it though, for the feeling of triumph he had when he was able to come home in victory with money in his hands to give to momma for the bills. She saw the money and heard what he'd done to earn it, how he'd battered himself bloody against the rocks because he wanted so much to help her. She burst into tears. His eyes went wide in panic, but she fell to her knees and hugged him so tight his ribs creaked. "Thank you, cricket," she said, and gave him a not-quite-perfect smile.

It didn't take long before the other students learned not to bet against him, so he went into the city and started betting civilians. The Academy left him little time and no energy, but momma's bills were piling up. He trained all day, then raced into the city before sundown so he could make some ryo. Soon enough, the civilians stopped betting against him and he had to go to different parts of the city, parts that were far enough away that he couldn't get there and back before dinner. Momma insisted he be home for dinner, so he went afterwards, slipping out the window after momma put him to bed.

It wasn't long before he discovered craps. The first time he played, he lost all his money, but afterwards he went home and practiced throwing the dice until he rolled each of the numbers. After that, he did it perfectly. He was careful to always keep that pair with him from then on.

He'd lost all his money the first time, but he scraped up six ryo in change and went back to the tables. His six ryo rapidly turned into six hundred, then six thousand. The owner of the table told him to get lost. Hazou went and found another table at the back of another bar.

There were still too many moment of "why?" and "but!"; his demerits cost him Rookie of the Year and put him in the seventh decile. When he graduated, he was given D-rank missions: babysitting, dog walking, splitting firewood, guarding the market. Each mission was a (mostly) friendly competition with his team; he could always split more wood than his teammates, because every stroke of the axe was perfect. He was never as good with the dogs as his teammate Junko, though.

Momma loved hearing about the missions, and she laughed her bell-like laugh when he grumped. He grumped a lot; not because the missions bothered him - they did, but not as much as he let on - but because her laughs had gotten rare as plums in fall since poppa died and the bills started piling up.

He kept playing the tables to bring in money. Momma scolded him and told him to stop, that it was dangerous, but he continued anyway. He continued until the man with the dragon tattoo took him into the back of the casino and had a long talk with him. The man placed a hammer on the table at the beginning of the talk, but never touched it.

Two weeks later, he was taken off his team and assigned to a new team. His new team and a dozen others were being sent on a mission, an exciting mission, a mission that showed he'd earned the respect of his superiors.

His momma heard about the mission and smiled a perfect smile, kneeling down so she could hug him so tight and ruffle his hair. "Do your poppa and me proud, cricket," she said. "And come home to me." He'd promised he would.

And then the bad moments started.

It was a bad moment when Shikigami-sensei came out of the commander's tent covered in blood and told them it was a suicide mission. There'd been angry shouting, the various jonin and chunin arguing loudly while the genin stood back, quiet as frightened mice.

It was a bad moment when shouting turned to killing.

One of the jonin, Shenzi-san, threw the first blow. His fingers twitched in a furious chain of hand seals and the mist surged into Fukama-san's mouth and nose like snakes. An instant later, Fukama-san exploded, the mist ripping its way out of him in a fountain of gore.

The moments that followed were full of blood and death. When jonin fight, the very land suffers, and they were fighting with all they had. Centennial oaks exploded as chakra-reinforced fists blasted them apart. Water from the river lashed back and forth, whips and dragons and sling bullets smashing fragile human bodies to pulp. Fists and feet and kunai flew everywhere. Genin dove for cover; the ones who dove too slowly died.

Battles between jonin rarely last long, especially when they start at arm's length. The moments of the battle were not quite countable, but that was more a lacking of perception than numbers.

A few jonin escaped and returned to Mist, hoping to bargain the news of the others' defection for their own salvation; Hazou and the other survivors fled.

Shikigami-sensei had a plan. It wasn't a good plan - he admitted that himself - but it was the only one they had with a prayer of working. A decade earlier, he had been assigned an infiltration mission against Fire. He'd succeeded, but a Konoha ranger squad was right in his shadow on the way out. He'd run for a week, using every trick he knew to hide and break trail, but nothing had worked until he'd entered the swamp on the northwestern corner of Fire. The place was lethal; Shikigami-sensei showed them the back of his calf, where something had scooped out two cherry-sized balls of flesh. The rangers had refused to follow him in.

"Lethal or not, there's nowhere in the world better to hide," Shikigami said. And then he'd laid out the full plan: the founding of a new village.

It was the most audacious idea imaginable. Oh, there were contingencies - diplomatic approaches for dealing with Konoha if they were discovered too early, escape plans if it became necessary, a plethora of fallbacks. Shikigami-sensei was old for a ninja, at least fifty, and that age and experience showed in his planning. It also showed in the respect he was given; despite his age, no one wanted to spar with him except the most senior instructors at the Academy. He was fast, vicious, and utterly ruthless in a fight, and he barely held back. While he calmly laid out his plan he was focused on cleaning his hand; it was soaked in blood to the elbow from where he'd cut a kunoichi jonin's head off with a thrust of his kunai that went completely through her neck.

There were more moments after that. Most of those moments were full of terror, and all of them were full of exhaustion. Shikigami-sensei had driven them mercilessly.

"Zabuza-sama will be on our trail as soon as the escapees reach Mist," he said. "He moves like the wind and is the most skilled tracker I've ever seen. We must move faster."

Getting such a large group through the Konoha patrols was terrifying. They managed only because one of the chunin was a falconer, and his hawk could scout ahead. It wasn't enough; they managed to avoid actually being seen, but the patrols found their trail somehow. The former Mist nin reached the swamp barely an hour ahead of their pursuers.

The excitement hadn't stopped there, though. The swamp was overflowing with chakra, and life had adapted to it. The first alligator to attack had surged out of the water, clapping its jaws as it came for Akabane Izumi, the jonin guarding the left flank. A blast of wind chakra flew from the animal's jaws and sliced Izumi's leg off at the thigh. An instant later, the lightning-fast predator clamped onto the screaming jonin's torso and vanished under the water.

The swamp was waist-deep on the adults, chest-deep for the genin. The bottom was mud, and there were frequent deep spots where a person could lose their footing and fall out of their depth. Everyone who could waterwalk wanted to, but Shikigami-sensei allowed only a small group up at a time, not wanting everyone to be drained of chakra at once. Soon enough, everyone was soaked and exhausted. Many were bleeding and pale from where chakra leeches had stealthily clamped on to exposed skin and siphoned them nearly dry.

They lost six genin and another chunin in the first hour - two more gator attacks before they learned to spot the sort of places the gators would lie in wait. A small water burst under the surface would alarm the creatures enough to make them give away their position. Chakra-enhanced alligators were the apex predators of the swamp, but against experienced ninja? They were meat.

The next three gators were met with killing jutsu; after that, the rest stayed clear. No one was entirely comfortable with the level of intelligence that suggested.

Less than two minutes after the last gator attack, a clump of innocent-looking reeds suddenly lashed out at one of the chunin, sticking into Morobuni-san's neck and pulling him in. His genin reacted immediately, cutting the reeds, but the wounds were too severe. The two medic-nin, Fu and his apprentice Hotaru, had done all they could, but Morobuni bled out in seconds.

Shikigami-sensei ordered Fu to water-walk and took Hotaru onto his own back. It was important to keep the two of them alive, he said, detailing three chunin to protect Fu. Despite the precautions, Fu was dead thirty minutes later; a lilly pad two full yards from his path suddenly turned itself inside out, exposing barb-like spines that it fired into his chest and face. He was dead before he hit the water. After that, any lily pad that came in sight was reconnoitered with some ninja wire and a kunai.

The first night they'd found a clump of trees rising from the water and slept high. In the morning, two of the genin were dead, covered in insect bites and completely exsanguinated. They'd never made a sound.

By the time the group reached the island in the center of the swamp they were down to twenty-seven survivors, all of them wounded and so exhausted they were barely able to keep on their feet. Fortunately, there was a cave in which they could all fit. The island was large and solid, an upthrust of igneous rock with sandstone inclusions; the igneous rock gave a firm foundation and the limestone made for plenty of interconnected caves. Not all easily navigable - the water got in everywhere, and many of the passages were low - but there was room.

"Eat some ration bars and then sleep," Shikigami-sensei said to the group, once the cave had been declared animal-free and a fire was started. "Three watches, one team each. I'll take first." He waved to Hazou and the other two and moved for the mouth of the cave. The three genin lined up without being told, one knee down and their backs to the outside so that Shikigami-sensei could see the entire arc behind them while he spoke.

"The three of you are a scratch team," he said. "You were not put together by a bunch of limp-wristed Academy bureaucrats in the city because you had the right grades. You were put together by me, the toughest bastard for a hundred miles, because you are survivors. You survived the Bloody Mist Academy, the harshest gods-damned ninja school on this or any other planet. You survived a close-range battle between a dozen jonin. You survived a grueling race across enemy territory, hounded by the forces of the most powerful ninja village in existence. You survived this murderous fucking swamp, which killed experienced jonin in the blink of an eye. Now you are my genin and you will by every god continue to survive, or I will kill you myself. Are we crystal clear on that point?"

"Sensei! Yes, sensei!" the three chorused, their voices carefully lowered in respect for the night.

"Good," he said with a firm nod. "Now, we don't have time for bullshit, and I won't put up with it. There's no D-rank time wasters here to let you 'develop your interpersonal connections' and all that crap. You will work as a team from this moment on. You will cover each other's backs. You will eat, sleep, and train together. You will be, at every moment, so close to one another that you're smelling what the other two had for breakfast. And If anything happens to one of you, I will literally tear strips off the other two, so you had better look out for each other. Are we clear?!"

"Sensei! Yes, sensei!"

"Good. Now, there's a hell of a lot to do. We've got enough trail rations for two weeks, we've got plenty of water"-he gestured wryly at the swamp-"and we've got shelter. The trail rations are going to get mighty old mighty fast; we're going to need to scout, hunt, gather, and trade. We need more firewood, and lots of it; I only had enough in my scroll for a couple nights. Medicine, clothing, money, maps, rope, building supplies, tools...a thousand things.

"Fortunately, we came through the swamp the hard way; it's only a couple of hours to get to dry land if you head that way"-he pointed off into the darkness-"and there should be a lumber town another two hours on from there. We've got six teams; tomorrow is a rest day, but the following morning I'm going to send two teams out hunting and two to go into town. The other two will stay here and train their asses off; we need to turn you all into jonin as fast as can be done and I intend to work you into the ground to make that happen. For tonight, though, we need to make sure we don't get eaten by surprise. Let me show you a trick. Grab some of those rocks." He waved at the scree pile to the left, where a long-ago slide brought down everything from pebbles to rocks the size of a person's head.

The mouth of the cave was perhaps six feet wide; it went in a few feet, then dog-legged sharply to the left before opening out into a larger space. It was nearly the perfect camp site, as the dog-leg would catch most of the light from a fire, as well as render the cave more defensible. It was at the edge of the island, about twenty feet from the water's edge and only barely above the water level. The ground was strewn with sand and gravel and devoid of plant life.

Shikigami-sensei directed the genin to build two cairns of rocks, one to the left and one to the right of the cave mouth, both about halfway to the water's edge. The first step was to lay a bed of gravel, then an explosive tag, then pile more rocks and gravel and sand on top.

"The bedding keeps the tag from getting wet and ruined by ground water," the jonin explained. "The stuff you put on top keeps it from getting wet from rain or condensation. More importantly, when you set the tag off, all the crap you piled on top blasts outwards and turns everything in the area into mulch. Now, since that includes us, we'll need a couple hides, one on either side of the cave."

It took half an hour of sweaty, grunting labor to pile enough rocks up to make a blast shield that sensei was happy with. By the time they finished, all three genin were exhausted.

"My turn," sensei said. He snapped his fingers and half a dozen water clones rose up from the swamp. They promptly begin collecting rocks and piling them up on the other side of the cave mouth.

"Here's a lesson for you," Shikigami-sensei said. "When you're given a task, check all your assumptions and examine all your assets. You could have asked me to make clones and then you wouldn't have been so sweaty."

Fortunately for Shikigami-sensei, none of the genin had yet mastered the ancient art of the Bloody Mist Technique: River's Dragon Dance of Doom, more commonly known as "kill-you-with-my-brain no jutsu". They gave it their absolute best effort, though.

The jonin laughed. "That's the spirit. Now, I know you haven't had any time to talk while we've been on the run. Sit down in that hide and talk. Find out who you are and what you can do. Figure out how you're going to fight together most efficiently. And figure out which of the missions you think you'd be best suited for - scout and hunt, or scout and trade. I won't promise you'll get what you want, but it's a good exercise in tactical analysis. You can't stay in and train; you're my students and I can't afford to seem like I'm showing favoritism. Don't worry, me and my friends here will keep watch."

The three genin bowed respectfully and retreated to their assigned position, settling in to talk as ordered.

* * *

The three genin were struggling to stay awake by the time the next team came out to take watch. Gratefully, they handed over the duty and stumbled to their bedrolls.

Just as he was pulling his blanket over himself, eager to bid goodbye to the last of this miserable day, Hazou's attention was caught by a whispered conversation between two chunin sharing a bedroll a few yards away.

"They wouldn't _really_ send Zabuza-sama after us, would they?" Ueda-san said fearfully. The man was built like an oxcart - at least six foot eight, massive shoulders, and a chest that Hazou would have had to stretch to reach around. Despite his imposing presence, the chunin seemed honestly frightened at the thought of the Demon Swordsman coming after them. "I mean...they'd be losing a ton of money taking him off missions, right? And besides, they wouldn't give him permission to go into Fire. It could start a war...right?"

Saito Kaho was the exact opposite of her bedmate's physique: tiny, willowy...a very stupid person might have said 'delicate'. She laughed, running her fingers vigorously through her long black hair to loosen it from its carefully out-the-way battle-ready updo.

"Come on, lover, you know this," she said, combing her fingers through it to get out as many of the snarls as she could. "He's the Captain of the missing-nin hunter squads. He doesn't go on missions, he just collects heads for the bounties. Most missing-nin who last more than ten minutes are big enough news that their home village has a major price on their heads. And no, they wouldn't give him permission to enter Fire, but he'd do it anyway. And Mizukage-sama knows that, and Zabuza-sama knows that he knows and so on down all the ridiculous numbers of layers those two think at. If Zabuza-sama gets overly enthusiastic chasing a bounty, violates someone else's turf and gets caught at it..well, he can probably just say 'yes, but...missing-nin bounty!' and it's fine."

Whatever the opposite of 'reassured' was, Ueda-san was that. "But if they didn't buy it, he'd start a war!"

Saito-san leaned up so that she could kiss him gently. "I love you, ox," she said, cupping his cheek. "But you really need to stop hoping against hope and just accept what is. If Zabuza-sama gets in trouble, the Mizukage can complain that Fire got overly aggressive and killed off a licensed missing-nin hunter in pursuit of his duties. And if Fire gets too snappish about it, Mizukage-sama can say that Zabuza-sama exceeded his authority and went rogue, disregarding the very strict orders that he'd been given to not violate any other nation's territorial boundaries."

Ueda-san started to say something else, but Saito-san silenced him with a kiss, molding her entire body into him in a gesture of love, reassurance, and comfort that lacked lustful fervor only because both parties were too tired and too frightened to do more than wrap themselves around each other and fall into dreams.

Hazou pulled his own blankets up with an unhappy frown; for a moment he worried that he wouldn't be able to sleep with these new concerns chasing themselves around inside his head. Almost before he finished the thought he was tumbling down through layers of dreams into the sodden sleep of a young boy who had been running on the very last dregs of his energy for days.


	3. Chapter 2: Hunter, Hunted

Hoster's Note: This is an in-progress story being rehosted. If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link. This story is rehosted with permission.

* * *

Hazō scanned his surroundings as he trudged through the waist-deep water of the swamp.

"3D vision," Shikigami-sensei had explained when they'd asked him for tips. "Forget to look up, and the bats will suck you dry. Forget to look down, and the alligators will tear off your legs. Forget to look to the sides, and the jumping leeches will lunge from the trees and eat your face."

Even so, Hazō felt that he'd made the right choice in convincing his teammates to go scouting within the swamp, rather than to attempt to trade at the nearest town. Wakahisa Noburi, the short, stout boy on his left, never shut up, and if he grated on the villagers' nerves half as much as he did on Hazō's, they'd be chased out with torches and pitchforks. Mori Keiko, the slim, waifish girl on his right, wasn't so bad, but she didn't speak unless spoken to, and that did not suggest highly-developed social skills. Of course, Hazō himself wasn't one to talk, in multiple senses.

The other thing that Shikigami-sensei had emphasised was the need to stay aware of trees and dry ground, because if they couldn't get out of the water at short notice, they were as good as dead. Water walking would help against some things, like the lurker mandibles snapping up out of the mud, but it wouldn't get them far against the water snakes or the razorfish.

Of course, water walking was another of Hazō's weaknesses. It was a technique seemingly designed as a counter to the way he preferred to learn, requiring constant adaptation to a shifting environment, and given all those manual labour D-rank missions, it wasn't like he'd had much opportunity to practise either. In the end, he'd swallowed his pride and asked Mori to help him, but she told him that it would take days at best to get a new skill developed to the level of casual use.

But if there was one thing that cheered him up, it was the awareness that he was now effectively team leader, and the team was following his plan. Mori had never been in the running, of course, and while Wakahisa talked a good game, in the end he had shrunk away from the responsibility. It felt odd to lead others like this, but it wasn't a bad feeling.

The harsh cry of some distant bird brought Hazō's conscious attention back to his surroundings, and he realised to his dismay that Wakahisa was _still_ talking.

"I'm just saying, if we stay here either this place will kill us by attrition, or the Mist hunter-nin will catch up with us, or Leaf will scrape together a patrol with the right skills to come in and hunt us down. The Leaf clans have lived in the Fire Country for centuries, there's no way there isn't one with swamp survival know-how."

"All right," Hazō patiently replied, "so what would you do if you were Shikigami-sensei?"

"I'd negotiate with Leaf, duh. Between the twenty-seven of us, we must have enough valuable information to trade for our safety. We could even offer to –"

"The day I was assigned to this mission, my grandfather came to see me," Mori cut in, in a slightly distant, flat voice that sounded like she was reading from a book. "He was ex-ANBU, and after he congratulated me, he gave me a few tips that he said every genin heading into hostile territory ought to know."

The two boys were all ears.

"The most effective means is an exploding tag placed here," she indicated a spot near her solar plexus. "There's little time for pain, and the damage prevents the enemy from dissecting your remains for village secrets. But exploding tags have a time delay, and require activation, so the enemy can stop you. Therefore the most reliable means is to sever the carotid artery with a kunai. If you make a movement like _this_ , you will bypass the thick neck muscles and inflict a deep, broad cut. In the final moments, try to fall so that your body cannot be retrieved before you bleed out.

"If you _are_ captured, don't bother trying to bite out your tongue. Even if you hit the lingual artery, it heals before you can lose enough blood. The exception is if the torturers have destroyed your ability to write. A genin who cannot speak or write is usually too much trouble to keep interrogating, and they will promptly execute you. If your hands have been kept intact, you should instead –"

Part of Hazō was uncomfortable, while part of him was taking notes since this was valuable information. Wakahisa, on the other hand...

"Mori, stop. Just stop."

"She's right," Hazō said. "Jōnin are valuable enough that they might have room to negotiate, but genin like us would only be a liability to Leaf. We could be spies. We could be saboteurs. We could be bait to make Leaf violate the missing-nin exchange treaties. There is no scenario in which our group surrenders to Leaf and the three of us are left alive."

"There has to be something," Wakahisa insisted. "We could hire ourselves out as black ops, give them ninja with plausible deniability. We need allies if we're going to survive, and we're a group of tough fighters with a lot to offer."

"I was going to be in Logistics & Support," Mori said dully. "It's the Mori speciality. I was assigned to be Sumie-sensei's assistant. I wasn't expected to enter live combat outside an emergency.

"Then Sumie-sensei died. I watched it happen. She was standing still, looking so peaceful. Then Gorō-sensei put his hand through her chest. I could see the realisation in her eyes as the genjutsu broke, and then they just went blank and she fell."

Wakahisa moved to put a hand on her shoulder. "Mori, I –"

Mori slapped it away with a quick, sharp movement. Then her eyes seemed to focus.

"I'm sorry!"

She looked down at the muddy water, and took a few long breaths.

"I'm OK. I'm sorry for distracting you two from the mission. That was stupid. I'm OK."

Hazō wanted to be sympathetic, but honestly, they'd all been through the same thing, and the middle of a killer swamp where everything was out to get them was not the best place to get emotional. If he hadn't kept paying attention to the environment, all sorts of things could have gone wrong.

-o-

They'd managed to cover a fair amount of ground since then, most of it in silence, and the blank map Shikigami-sensei had given them was slowly filling up. Topographic features, static hazards, natural resources, good sites for fallback positions and hidden caches… Shikigami-sensei would be pleased.

The hunting part was not going so well. There had been some raised ridges with what Wakahisa thought were deer trails, but the team had neither the knowledge nor the materials to set proper snares, and given that the local deer were probably three metres tall and breathed fire, no one wanted to try taking them on in a straight fight. So they had gone back to Plan A, which was to say fishing.

When prompted, Mori had offered some suggestions to improve Hazō's original scheme, such as placing the watcher on top of rather than behind the rock face, because a lot of local creatures would hunt by scent or chakra sense, and so line of sight would be far more valuable to the ninja than to their quarry. Hazō had also asked Shikigami-sensei for safe fishing advice, and ended up making a reinforced fishing rod out of a hefty tree branch, a metal hook and some ninja wire, with tree frogs for bait. Any creature capable of breaking the rod was probably too dangerous to tangle with in the first place, while anything else would be trapped and in pain, and easier to kill.

Or that was the theory. In practice, their catch for the day had amounted to the following:

One balloon-shaped fish which rapidly extended two-foot-long spikes whenever they got near, even when dead.

Three water snakes of various sizes, two probably venomous and one constricting.

Two potentially (but unconfirmedly) edible fish.

One member of a school of very small piranha-like predators with many teeth and dubious nutritional value.

A luminous green… thing… which they all agreed had to be inedible.

A huge eel which was less caught and more choked to death on the fishing rod after tearing the entire thing out of Hazō's hands and swallowing it whole.

They decided to cut their losses at the last one.

Wakahisa sorted the catch to figure out what to take home while Mori kept watch on their surroundings. Hazō went down to extract the hook and ninja wire, and assess the eel for potential edibility. He was just bending down, when-

"Out of the water! Now!"

Hazō sent an immediate burst of chakra into his feet, leaping out to the rock face and barely making it out of the water before the jaws of the monster alligator closed around the space where he'd been.

"Well," he said, adrenaline running through his veins, "I guess we have dinner."

Before the alligator could recover from its failure and make its getaway, Mori and Wakahisa's flurry of kunai struck its enormous face, making it thrash in pain for the few seconds it took for Wakahisa to deploy his Water Whip and asphyxiate it.

After enough strangulation to make sure the crocodile was very definitely dead, plus kunai through both eyes in case it changed its mind, the group was left only with the difficulty of carrying their catch home. The corpse took all three of them to lift, and promised a slow journey. They would have to make good time to make it back to the base before sunset – and sunset meant reduced visibility and vampire bats.

As the team was cresting a ridge on their way back, Mori stopped them. "I didn't see that before, but look. Don't those fallen trees look like they could be a concealed shelter?"

"No, they don't," Wakahisa quickly replied. "It's just your imagination. And anyway, we need to hurry. We can report this to the jōnin and they can decide whether to send someone out to investigate."

"We're here to scout and identify threats and objects of interest," Mori said. "That is either a threat or an object of interest, and if it's a threat and we leave it, there may be catastrophic consequences."

Both of them looked to Hazō.


	4. Chapter 3: Nightfall

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

* * *

Walking in a swamp is hard.

Walking in a swamp where everything wants to eat you is very hard.

Walking in a swamp where everything wants to eat you while carrying a 5-meter-long, 600 kg alligator corpse that tends to tip over with almost vindictive frequency… well, that was the sort of thing where everyone could agree you were having a bad day and you deserved a cookie and a bit of a lie-in.

The whole experience was a misery. There were bugs the size of kunai-well, not literally, but it seemed like it-buzzing everywhere, and they all seemed to think that lightly-poached-by-the-sun genin was a tasty treat.

Hazou cursed and swatted at the latest flying monstrosity that had just delivered a stinging bite on the back of his neck. The motion destabilized his grip on the alligator and the thing promptly twisted out of his hands, sending all three genin into the muck.

Aside from Hazou's muffled "Sorry", none of them said anything as they got themselves straightened up again, the swampwater brushed out of their eyes, and the alligator hoisted overhead. None of them had the energy; they'd been burning chakra to deadlift more than their combined bodyweight worth of dead meat and carry it overhead. They stopped every twenty minutes to refill their chakra reserves by drinking from Noburi's cask. During the rest breaks they would work their fingers to shake out the cramps, and wipe the mud out of the blisters they were getting from where the 'gator's rough, scaly hide had been slowly sanding away their skin.

They'd tried floating the corpse and pushing it along like a raft, but that hadn't worked well; it didn't float evenly, so it tended to roll lazily over while yawing to the side. On top of that there were enough shallow spots, reeds, and snags that it had become easier just to carry the damn thing overhead.

They'd noted the location of the strange maybe-a-shelter-maybe-not on their map but headed home without investigating. Hazou was carrying the head of the gator, Keiko was on the tail, and Noburi was in the middle. Each had their own threat axis to watch: Hazou was responsible for the 180-degree forward arc, Keiko had right and rear, Noburi had left and rear. Both of the other two genin had stabbed kunai into the gator corpse and used ninja-wire to fasten their signal mirrors to them so they could see behind themselves without turning around. Under the circumstances it was the best they could do, but none of them were terribly sanguine about their ability to spot attacks from behind. Noburi had volunteered to maintain a continuous, low-level chakra drain so as to be aware of nearby sources. Keiko and Hazou thought it was more than worth having their chakra slowly leeched away in order to get even a moment's extra warning.

This area of the swamp was "hilly", the underwater topography varying a great deal. There were strips of ground where the water was only ankle deep, but one step to the side the bottom was ten feet down. Generally, the high ground had reeds or grasses growing on it, and there would be a mat of rotting vegetation alongside it. Of course, then there were the reeds, grasses, and mats that took up station out in the middle of a random patch of deep bog just so they could trick people. That didn't make finding the high ground any easier. Keiko had pointed out, in a voice that was already exhausted, that the reeds were hollow and the dead-and-dried-out ones would make excellent tinder, as they stayed upright and really did dry. The two boys had nodded, not wasting the energy to talk, collected a few stalks as samples, and shuffled on past.

They had found a very high ridge that ran in the direction they wanted to go, and had eagerly scrambled up atop it. With the water barely over the toes of their shoes, they were making excellent time when Hazou...

* * *

 **Hazou; Awareness** :  
sum 3D100 = 51 ; 89 ; 65 ; total=205

 **Enemy; Stealth** :  
sum 4D100 = 35 ; 47 ; 56 ; 52 ; total=190

* * *

...saw the mat of dead reeds in the water beside them shift in his peripheral vision.

They'd seen similar things throughout the day. A fly would land on the surface, causing ripples. An amphibian would blink and twist its head. Small motions, not of any particular significance. To his dying day, Hazou would never know why exactly he knew this one was different, but he found himself instinctively throwing himself backwards, sending all three genin tipping off the high ground to the left, into the water on the side opposite where the monstrosity was rearing up.

It was eight feet long, massive-blubber and muscle both-and covered in fur so matted and caked in mud that it became ersatz armor. It moved too fast for Hazou to consciously sort out what he was seeing; there was no time for processing or thinking, just for smooth and carefully-drilled action, the power of his family's blood singing through him as the world became slow and smooth, his awareness expanding to integrate everything around him, imaginary lines drawing themselves through space to define a series of form-fitting tunnels down which his body could be propelled. The fight played out in his head in a series of flashes:

Enemy's speed too great; activate boost; lightning/fire surging in veins, body burning with speed/power; enemy assaulting team - **KILL!**

Disemboweling strike inbound from enemy's left-second leg; leap backwards, spilling gator and team into water but avoiding strike

Chest-deep water is suboptimal combat environment. Pull-up back onto high ground, roll to feet

Ranged attack from mouthparts-sticky rope?; sway to side

Hurl kunai? No, enemy too fast, chelicerae too heavily armored. Must close

Crouch/pivot around overhead strike from right-front leg

Peripheral awareness: spark of light on enemy's forepaw; jump before paw lands; yes, discharge flash indicates raiton shock delivered through water

Note cries of teammates for later

Drive kunai into enemy ankle joint to incapacitate leg. Maintain grip, allow self to be carried forward as leg withdraws

Strike incoming from right; kip up, twist

Strike incoming from left; release grip on kunai, drop

Cat-twist / pike to land three-point on enemy's back

Strike!

Hazou blinked and the world came back. As always, it seemed faded and bland after the thrumming speed and power of chakra boost. The bear...spider...spiderbear… _thing_ was collapsed in the water under him, all eight legs twitching furiously but uselessly; Hazou's kunai strike had severed the spinal cord and cut off all contact between the primary brain and the limbs. Apparently there were sufficient reflex centers to maintain some movement, but nothing like enough to be a threat.

Just to be sure, he stabbed his kunai into its brain a few times, then into the shoulder joints, then into the brain a few more times. The skull was so thick that the tip of his kunai chipped off, but he kept punching it in again and again until the skull was in fragments, the brain had splashed, and the legs were not moving at all.

The spiderbear's raiton attack had been powerful enough that, had Hazou been in the water when the attack hit near him, he probably would have died on the spot. Fortunately, Noburi and Keiko had been far enough away that they'd only been stunned. Hazou helped them climb back up onto the high ground and the three of them surveyed the kill.

"What does it eat?" Keiko asked.

"Us, it thought," Hazou said.

She rolled her eyes. "Normally, I mean. A predator this size must need an incredible number of calories to maintain the speed it displayed. Clearly, it's an ambush predator, which will save it considerable energy, but the question still stands."

"Does it matter?" Hazou asked. "It's dead."

"Yes," Keiko said. "But there's a piece missing here. We've seen too many apex predators and not enough game for them to feed on. Maybe there's a lot more fish than we saw, but evolution fitted this monster to take down large prey, not the occasional watersnake. One explanation would be that there's something deeper in the swamp that's recently arrived and is dangerous enough that it's been pushing apex predators out of their normal hunting ranges."

Hazou didn't say anything and carefully kept his eyes on the body he'd killed. When he'd poured chakra through himself, spending it profligately in the face of an otherwise-overwhelming foe, he had briefly been a god. Now, he was back in his mortal body again, and facing the letdown that came with that. It was so small, so slow, being merely human. He'd needed to be more to deal with the spiderbear, and still the battle hadn't been as easy as it must have looked from the outside. The creature had been so fast; a little more speed on its part, a little more clumsiness on Hazou's, and it would have been him lying there in the water, his brain spread out over ten square feet. And now there was something _worse_?

He sighed. Well, that was what a team was for; this time, he'd been fast enough to cover for them. The next time, when "worse" showed up, they'd cover for him, or the three of them would take it on together.

Keiko waited for him to respond; when he didn't she started fidgeting. "It...might be something else, of course," she finally said. "That was only the first thought that came to mind. There are other possibilities. It could be that-"

Hazou waved her to silence. "Let's talk about it back at base," he said. He paused for a moment, then turned back. "Noburi, I need some water, please; I had to burn chakra to take that thing down."

See? Covering each other's weaknesses. They could do this.

o-o-o-o

An hour after they left the site of their battle, the team was slogging through thigh-deep mud with the gator held above their heads. Hazou stumbled on a root but caught himself; he was about to warn his companions about its presence when he noticed the snake up ahead.

It was just coming into sight, twisting sinuously back and forth at the surface of the water; he couldn't see the far end of it, but there must have been at least twenty meters of its bright red, shiny body in sight already. It was wiggling sidewinder-style across the surface towards them at a human's slow walking speed. Without even thinking he pulled out a kunai, clipped it to a coil of ninja wire, and hurled it unerringly at the snake, severing it just behind the head...at which point the "snake" dissolved into a swarm of millipedes the size of Hazou's pinky. They'd been traveling in a nose-to-tail chain, and when the kunai severed that chain the millipedes burst apart and shifted gears from "gentle mosey" to "pants-wettingly fast charge".

At Hazou's yell, Noburi and Keiko grabbed their non-waterwalking teammate under the arms and leaped up onto the surface of the water, putting a dozen yards between themselves and the insectile horde. Fortunately, the bugs weren't interested in the genin; they swarmed up onto the alligator corpse and started feasting. It was an eerily coordinated pavane; an insect would jam its pincer-equipped head into one of the wounds made by the genin's weapons, tear a gobbet of flesh out, and then step aside to let the next one have a turn.

The former Mist-nin watched the disgusting yet oddly hypnotic process for a full minute before Keiko observed, "We should probably put a stop to that."

"Yeah," said Hazou. Pause. "Any idea how? I'm not going over there."

In practice it turned out to be simple. Tedious and time-consuming, but simple. Noburi manifested his Water Whip and used it to crush the bugs. It would have been unworkably slow but for two things: the bugs liked to cluster together, and they couldn't breathe water. They had a natural water-walking ability, but sufficient impact would disrupt it and push them under, at which point they would drown in under a minute. Noburi must have killed hundreds of the creatures, but the majority of them just left. The bugs simply had enough to eat, connected with some other bugs, and went off in another long, twisting "snake."

By the time the creatures had left and the genin had carefully inspected the corpse to make sure there were no millipedes inside it having an after-dinner snack, forty minutes had passed and the sun was stumbling heavy-footed towards the horizon like an exhausted laborer heading home for the night.

"On the bright side, the corpse is lighter now," Noburi said, clearly forcing himself to sound cheerful. It was true; the millipedes had eaten easily two hundred pounds of meat before departing.

"Unfortunately, we lost forty minutes," Keiko said. "We are not going to get back before dark if we carry the alligator."

Keiko and Noburi both turned and looked expectantly at Hazou.

Inwardly, Hazou cursed. Leadership was a mixed bag; the authority was nice, but having to make decisions that could get them all killed was stressful.


	5. Chapter 4: Blood in the water

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

* * *

"Blood in the water!"

That might have been the first time Hazō had heard Inoue-sensei swear while sober. The diminutive redhead stared in awe at the collection of dagger-like claws and teeth that the genin had dumped unceremoniously (well, exhaustedly) at her feet.

"You're telling me you personally stripped these from an alligator. Just so we're clear, that's one of those giant killer alligators that can swallow kids like you whole, right? And not, say, some stray lizard that happened to be crawling by?"

The genin nodded. Trying to get useful materials out of the alligator in a hurry had not been easy, especially with the awareness that the sun was setting and they could be minutes away from death at the proboscises of a pack of venom gliders. But this reaction almost made the experience worthwhile.

"And you three killed it all by yourselves, on your first trip out?"

The genin nodded again.

"Well," Inoue-sensei took a step forward into Hazō's personal space, "come on, details. You can't leave a girl hanging after presenting her with trophies like that!"

Hazō exchanged brief glances with the other two. They'd taken some time and effort to craft their report after Wakahisa had brought up the idea that the jōnin wouldn't be too impressed with a tale of desperate improvised tactics and a ninja nearly getting eaten.

"I played the role of bait within a controlled environment in order to lure the alligator from concealment. As soon as Mori located and identified the target from her vantage point, the three of us exploited our terrain advantage to disable it with a combined kunai barrage, and then Wakahisa finished it off with the Water Whip Technique before it had a chance to recover. Making the judgement call that bringing the alligator back with us was not viable, we harvested its most immediately useful parts and retreated."

"Nice job. Mako would be so proud of you," Inoue-sensei reached out to ruffle Hazō's hair. Hazō reflexively tried to dodge, but when the three-year-running female jōnin CQC champion wants your hair ruffled, your hair gets ruffled.

"Who is Mako, Inoue-sensei?" Mori asked.

"Little Hazō's jōnin instructor," Inoue-sensei explained. "She and I go way back -"

She blinked.

" _Went_ way back."

Her bouncy demeanour deflated a little.

"All right, kids. Seeing how close you've cut it time-wise, you must have plenty else to report. Get to it."

-o-

"A pity you didn't bring back the spiderbear thing too. Ichimaru would have had a field day dissecting it. That eel sure is a beauty, though. Anyway, you'll have to summarise all this again at tonight's general meeting, but I'm going to ask you to leave out the part about the shelter, OK? I'll make sure the rest of Command knows about it myself. Actually, that goes for your apex predator theories too. We don't want any overreactions."

So there was a "Command" now? Hazō filed this thought away for later reflection.

Inoue-sensei turned away. "Shirogane! Get this stuff to materials storage for me!"

The genin shuffled their feet, waiting to be dismissed.

"Oh, right, you guys are still here."

"Inoue-sensei," Hazō asked, "how did the other teams do?"

Inoue-sensei gave a proud smile. "Not as well as my little Hazō, that's for sure."

Hazō began to reflexively squirm in embarrassment, and only managed to catch himself in time as he realised this would only make him look more like a kid.

"Team Yamaguchi were on scouting duty. They've managed to bring back some very detailed maps of the area, and they found a type of smokeless wood that practically had Shikigami doing a little jig. They came back without any injuries to speak of, and we think we managed to flush the toxins out of their systems before any permanent damage was done. Team Shinra, on scouting and hunting duty, weren't so lucky. It wasn't until they were stopped by the sentry on their way back that they realised there were only two of them. Even now, they can't remember losing Misaka."

Suddenly, the inside of the cave felt a lot colder.

"On the plus side," Inoue-sensei continued as if nothing was wrong, "Team Uchida completed their mission of scouting out the village with only one major encounter - a run-in with parasitic slimes which they survived unscathed. They report a community of a few hundred rice farmers, with the main body of the village surrounded by a heavy-duty palisade with watch towers and traps scattered over a wide area, presumably for the wildlife. You'll hear the full report tonight. In the meantime..."

Inoue-sensei's expression faded to neutral. She studied the genin's faces slowly and with an uncomfortable level of intensity, as if trying to see through the ninjutsu disguises they weren't using.

"Wakahisa, Hazō, you're relieved. Go play cards or something until the general meeting. Mori, you're coming with me."

The two boys watched as Mori meekly, and somewhat anxiously, followed Inoue-sensei into the depths of the cave.

"So, uh, any idea what that was about?" Wakahisa asked the second they were out of earshot.

Hazō considered Inoue-sensei. Mist knew her as a top-class genjutsu specialist with a preference for infiltration and seduction missions (even though every single one involved having to dye long, red hair) and an improbable gift for close quarters combat. To this list Hazō could add limitless energy, a cast-iron liver, complete obliviousness to personal boundaries and a disturbing fondness for gossip. Quite frankly, though Inoue-sensei wasn't a bad person _as such_ , he wouldn't want to see anyone left alone with her, much less a helpless innocent like Mori. However, if the alternative was getting in Inoue-sensei's way himself...

"I think we'd better leave it," he told Wakahisa. "Do not meddle in the affairs of genjutsu users, for they are creative, and don't mind breaking their toys.

"She told me that once, after I pointed out a couple of issues with her stance."

Wakahisa bit his lip, and did not press the issue.

-o-

"...while you were staring down the throat of that eel like it had swallowed your house keys!"

"Well, maybe if you'd maintained line of sight like you were supposed to, instead of playing with dead fish, I wouldn't have ended up -"

The voices bouncing off the walls and ceiling of the small chamber Team Kurosawa had been assigned for sleeping quarters cut off instantly as Mori walked in. Her movements were slow and slightly sluggish. She hadn't been at the general meeting (although Inoue-sensei had been), or at dinner afterwards.

The boys watched their teammate as if she were an exploding tag with the delay counting down.

"Uh, Mori?" Wakahisa finally asked as he settled back down onto his bedroll. "What did Inoue-sensei want with you?"

"That's private," Mori said flatly.

Then, without any further comment, she leaned over and began to sort through her pack in preparation for bed.

A few minutes later, after everyone had settled down to sleep, they heard her voice in the darkness. "I'm sorry. That wasn't meant to sound so harsh. I don't always know what I'm going to sound like when I speak."

A pause.

"Inoue-sensei said to tell you that if... if you ever feel like you're breaking, go talk to her. She can help."

-o-

The next couple of days went by peacefully. Team Kurosawa was alternating between guard duty and downtime, with Hazō fitting training in between bursts of rapid reproduction of swamp maps. Shikigami-sensei (who'd had his own mix of congratulations and "how the hell could you be so suicidally stupid" to offer), had taken to the idea like a 600 kg ravenous killing machine to water, though he'd asked Hazō to mark their location with a hazard symbol instead of a cave symbol in case of interception. He'd also saluted Hazō's decision to invest his limited training time in learning water walking from Mori, and advised them to spend some of the rest on grasping the basic principles of hunting, with input from the more experienced jōnin to show them the ropes, the snares and the kunai traps.

Meanwhile, the cave hideout was beginning to take shape, with Earth Element digging and Water Element draining coming together to create something that increasingly resembled a living environment. One of the chūnin had even managed to extract the pulsing chakra bladders from the luminous green things genin teams were fishing up, each bladder generating several days' worth of sinister green light before being ruined by decay.

But nothing peaceful lasts forever.

"All right, you three," Shikigami-sensei announced, "time for you to get off your asses. As you know, Team Ueda is still in intensive care, and Hotaru says we're running low on basic medical supplies. Seeing as our real medic's dead, we're not about to go harvesting medicinal plants from the swamp, which means somebody has to go get what we need from the village. That somebody is you. Sneak in and steal them, or disguise yourelves and go trade, and either way, don't screw up."

"Why us?" Hazō asked. "Given how badly things could go wrong, isn't this a chūnin job?"

"It would be if we could spare the chūnin," Shikigami-sensei said. "But we can't spare them today, and Hotaru needs the stuff on this list yesterday. You've shown good judgement and survival skills, and I'm trusting you to pull this off without getting anyone killed or attracting attention. Don't be afraid to retreat if you're forced to - but above all, don't let me down.

"Maehara's Acting Quartermaster after what happened to Shinagawa, and he has orders to give you the supplies you need - conditional on you convincing me that you have a good use for them. So I'll give you twenty minutes to discuss, and then I'll hear you out.

"What's your plan?"


	6. Chapter 5: First Contact with Town

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

"Taller," Shikigami-sensei said, eyeing Hazou's henge critically. "The nose is too wide—it would be memorable. Yes, better." He turned to Keiko. "Shrink the boobs, widen the hips, more lines around the mouth; you're trying to look like a woman who lives in the woods. Not that much! Good. Lighten the hair a bit; you want a muddy brown, very forgettable. Yes, like that."

He examined the group one more time, then nodded in satisfaction. "A more forgettable group of disreputable woodsmen you couldn't hope to see," he said. "Off you go, then."

Team Kurosawa quickly swapped henges so that each of them could memorize exactly what their specified form looked like; it was a standard Academy technique for when mirrors weren't available. Each of them studied their opposite until they were confident in their ability to reproduce the form in the future, and then they swapped back into their assigned roles and turned for the exit.

Traversing the swamp was just as miserable as expected. In the two-plus hours that it took to reach dry land they needed to explain to twenty-seven chakra leeches, four venomous water snakes, one spear-lily, and a very confused predatory bird that no, genin were not in fact below them on the food chain. The only good thing about the trip was that now they could all waterwalk, so travel was a lot faster and there was a lot less mud involved. Once they reached dry land they took a few minutes to rest before setting off for the town.

They'd left just after the sun came over the horizon, so it wasn't even mid-morning when they arrived.

The town was impressive; the palisade was fully twelve feet high, and made of logs as thick as a man's wrist, tied together in two layers and then sealed with mud so that there wasn't the slightest crack. The gate slid on well-greased wooden rollers; there was a gap of a few inches between the bottom of the gate and the ground, but a secondary wall on the inside of the gate could be dropped down to seal even that space. There was a guard tower on either side of the gate, one at each corner of the town, and one in the middle of each wall. All guard towers held two women armed with bows, spears, and a large gong.

It wouldn't even slow down a ninja, of course, but against anything else it was about as tight a defense as one could ask for.

The houses were built on the same lines; small, boxy, with thick walls. Few of them were freestanding; most shared a wall with their neighbors. The windows were large, but on the inside of every window were mounted ridiculously thick shutters that could be closed quickly in event of need.

The genin stuck together, Hazou in the center in the role of father, Mori to his left as his wife, and Wakahisa to his right pretending to be his young-teens son. None of them felt terribly sanguine about this expedition; they were a heavy-combat team and a poor fit for an infiltration mission. Nonetheless, those were the orders.

Most of the village men were out in the fields as the team walked up. One of every eight stood guard, weapons in hand; the rest bent over the rice paddies with weapons on their backs—mostly jo staves or short spears, although there were occasional swords here and there.

"Hullo the town!" Hazou called, pitching his voice deep and gruff as he called up to the women in the guard towers. "We're hunters, come to trade. We need to buy medicine!"

"Come through!" one woman called back, waving them through the open gate. "Just keep your hands in sight!"

Inside, the genin found themselves facing the business end of three long spears wielded by a group of tough-looking women.

"Show us your packs, please," their leader said.

The team lowered their packs to the ground carefully and unfolded them, revealing them to contain nothing other than grass-wrapped meat and minimal camping gear.

"Traveling light, aintcha?" the leader of the guards asked.

"Like I said, we're just here to trade," Hazou said. "We're part of a group homesteading about half a day's hike that way"—he gestured to the east, well away from the southern route that would lead to the swamp—"and we need some things. We lost one of the wagons fording a river, and we need to replace the cargo. Medicine most of all, but also nails, rope, some tools. Some clothes and bags wouldn't go amiss, either. We're not looking for trouble; we just want to shop, grab a bite and maybe some news, then we're gone."

The woman nodded and the spears stopped pointing at them. "Sorry for the caution," she said. "We've had some bandit troubles lately. I'm Suzuki Yumiko, I'll get you to the herbalist." She gestured to her companions and they returned to their posts at the foot of the gate.

"I'll buy some of that meat off you myself," she said as they walked. "We're short of meat here; not a lot of room for animals. Thirty ryo to the pound sound about right?"

"Fifty sounds better," Hazou said. Shikigami had briefed him carefully; haggling at least a little was expected, and roughly half again the opening bid was the right first counteroffer.

Yumiko snorted. "I'm sure it does, but I'm not the Fire Daimyo. Thirty-five."

"Forty," Hazou said. He honestly didn't care that much; they had plenty and didn't need very much in exchange. Still, _not_ haggling would draw more attention than haggling.

"Thirty-seven, and I pick the cuts," Yumiko said.

"Sold," Hazou said.

Yumiko smiled and turned, leading them off to a house on the street to the right. She let them in, leading them to the kitchen; the team unwrapped their packs on the counter and let Yumiko select several cuts. She wrapped them up and put them away in a cabinet, then pulled out a small string of ryo coins and passed them over.

"Thanks," she said. "C'mon, I'll take you over to the herbalist."

The team followed her through the streets to the small shop. On the way, Hazou twice had to subtly wave the other two away; they were all nervous and there was a tendency to turn back-to-back and watch their threat sectors in a most uncivilian way.

The apothecary was a small building, one room in the front with a counter against the back wall and a table and two chairs to the left of the door. Behind the counter was a curtain that probably led to living quarters. The walls were lined with shelves full of powders, herbs, and small clay-red pots that might have contained anything, but were probably medicines of some kind. A table on the wall had two chairs, one of which was occupied by a just-past-middle-aged woman who was busy grinding something up in a mortar.

"Hey Koizumi-san, we've got some out-of-towners for you," Yumiko said.

The shop owner looked up, absently brushing an errant lock of hair out of her eyes. "Huh. Don't recognize you three," she said.

"We're hunters," Hazou replied. "Part of a group homesteading about half a day's hike east. We lost a bunch of stuff when one of our wagons was washed away fording a river, and we need to replace the cargo. Medicine most of all. We've got meat for trade."

Koizumi raised an eyebrow and studied them closely, lips pursed in thought.

"Is that so?" she murmured. Glancing as the team's guide she said, "Thanks, Suzuki-san, I've got it. You should get back."

The guard leader nodded, took her leave politely, and headed back to her post at the gate.

"I've got plenty of medicine," Koizumi said. "Also cooking spices—salt, pepper, thyme, if you're interested."

"Ahh...maybe after the medicine?" Hazou said weakly.

Koizumi nodded and pushed herself to her feet, heading back to the counter. "Anything in particular?" she asked.

Hazou fumbled the list out of a pocket. "These," he said, passing it over.

Koizumi eyed the list. "Yep, I've got all this," she said. "You said meat for barter?"

"Yes," Hazou said. Without a word the other two laid their packs on the corner and opened them to show the grass-wrapped steaks.

"Hmmm," Kikoyo said. She looked from the meat to the list and back. "Sounds about right," she said. "The list for your catch."

"Half," Hazou said, blindly working off Shikigami-sensei's advice. He honestly had no idea what a fair offer would be, and just hoped this wasn't ridiculous.

Koizumi snorted. "When pigs fly," she said. "Three quarters."

Hazou looked at the supplies. They were supposed to come back with maps and tools as well, although that was a secondary objective. He had no idea how much those things would cost; if he gave up a full three quarters for the medicine, would he have enough left? He looked at the other two for advice.

"Half," Mori said. "And we'll spend two hours gathering supplies for you in the forest."

Koizumi' eyebrows went up. "Hm," she said. "Interesting offer, but you could just come back and say you didn't find anything. Let's say you bring me a pound of hens-beak mushrooms instead."

"Done," Hazou said. "You'll have to show us what the mushrooms look like, though."

She nodded and rummaged around on one of the shelves, coming back with a dried brown scrap of fungus.

"This one is dried," she said. "You can still see the basic details though. Note the elliptical shape, this fluting under the cap, and the brown-and-white speckle pattern on the top. You'll find them in wet, dark places—try under rootballs, embankments, fallen logs, that sort of thing. Look for moss; hens-beak often grows in the same sort of environments."

The three genin leaned in close, studying the fungus. When he was sure he had it, Hazou glanced at the others to confirm they were ready. Two nods and he straightened up.

"We need some other things, too," Hazou said. "Tools, rope, maps...where could we find that sort of stuff?"

Koizumi scratched her neck in thought. "Tools you can find at Yukimura-san's—he's our blacksmith. Next street over, two houses down. Our weaver does rope as well as cloth; she's four houses down on your left. Not sure about maps, though. Not a lot of call for them."

"Thank you," Hazou said with a bow. "Please keep our order aside; we'll be back later with the mushrooms."

The trip to the weaver was simpler; her eyes lit up when she saw the fresh steaks, and she hardly bargained at all. Soon enough they had six cloth sacks and a hundred feet of rope. It took fully half their catch, but Hazou figured it would be easy enough to replace the meat with a bit more hunting since they were going into the forest anyway.

The tools were harder.

"Excuse me?" Hazou said, stepping through the door into the forge. It was hotter than hell, and the blacksmith, a short man with dense ropes of corded muscle all over his body, was banging on a red-hot chunk of metal shaped vaguely like a hoe.

"Minute!" the blacksmith called, not turning.

Hazou and the others waited patiently while the man banged the metal a bit more, then slid it back into the fire and turned around.

"Can't just stop anywhere," the smith said gruffly. He looked them over. "Out of towners, huh? You from Shuseikan? That iron is two weeks late. Much longer and I'm going to be reduced to pulling the nails out of the walls."

"Ah...no," Hazou said. "We're hunters, part of a group homesteading about half a day's hike east. We lost a bunch of stuff when one of our wagons was washed away fording a river, and we need to replace the cargo. We talked to Koizumi-san and got some medicine, now we need tools. We've got meat for trade."

"Meat, huh?" the man said, feigning casualness. "Well, I suppose I could take a look. What all are you looking for?"

Mori silently passed over a list.

"Hammers, nails, saws, anvil, tongs, forge hammer...," Yukimura mumbled, skimming down the list. "This is a full load. The hell did you lot think you were doing, going out homesteading with all the tools in one wagon? What kind of idiots are you?"

Hazou blanched. "Ah...well, I couldn't really say," he said, fumbling a bit. "We're just the hunters, we didn't have any part of the selecting or packing."

Yukimura sniffed disapprovingly. "Damn stupid bunch. You three can't be that bright if you went with a group and just trusted them to get it right." He eyed the list again. "Ordinarily I could do this for you no problem, but with the iron shortage I can't afford to let this much stuff go. The field guards usually burn through six or seven dozen arrows a week around here, and most of the tips can't be recovered because the critter runs back into the woods. If I don't get more iron soon we're going to be down to fire-hardened tips, and those don't fly as straight or hurt as much going in. It's going to cost lives. And I sure as _hell_ couldn't let go of an anvil. For one thing, if your half-wit of a smith wants to do more than make nails he's going to need three or four of various sizes. For another, they're a complete pain in the ass to cast, and they take way more iron than I can spare."

"Oh," Hazou said, looking at the others for ideas. Wakahisa shrugged; Mori just stared at him blankly.

"I can spare a couple hammers and a half-pound of short nails," Yukimura said. "Don't bother haggling, it's all you'll get. It'll cost you a thousand ryo."

"We...don't have cash," Hazou said carefully. "We were looking to barter for meat, or anything we can hunt or gather in the area."

"Hmm," Yukimura said, frowning. "Well...I'm pretty well set for meat, but do you think you could catch some steelbacks?"

"Some what?" Hazou asked blankly.

"Steelbacks," Yukimura said. "Sort of a cross between wild pigs and hedgehogs, but they have a doton ability that hardens their bristles into something almost as strong as good steel. Soaking the bristles in molten iron for a week leaches the chakra out, makes the resulting steel much stronger. It's one of the ways they make those super-strong swords and kunai for the ninja." He looked at them, frowning. "Where are you guys coming from, anyway? Steelbacks are all over the area, and they drop shoats as often as a baby craps." He raised a finger in warning. "I'd need yearlings or older. The shoats haven't absorbed enough chakra to make their bristles worth anything."

"Could we talk about that and get back to you?" Hazou asked.

Yukimura shrugged. "Sure," he said. "I don't have much need for them until the shipment comes in anyway." He turned back to the forge, dismissing them from his thoughts without a word.

"Thank you," Hazou said, bowing to the man's back before turning for the door.

"Are we doing that?" Wakahisa asked once they were outside.

"Dunno," Hazou said. "For now, let's get the mushrooms so we can get the medicine.

None of them were terribly sanguine about the task, but in the event it wasn't that hard. The mushrooms weren't common, but ninja can cover a lot of ground quickly, and all three of them were observant enough to spot the mushrooms easily. There was also quite a bit of game which they hunted on the way back. The only excitement came when a wrist-thick worm exploded out of the branches above them to sink its fangs into the deer they'd been about to harvest. The deer squealed in agony before collapsing and...melting. The worm remained anchored to it for a few seconds, slurping up the meat-slurry, then retracted back into the trees.

The three genin looked at each other, then circled wide around that tree and kept a close eye on the branches above them.

Once the mushrooms were gathered, they purchased the medicines from the apothecary and headed out, taking care to leave going east at a civilian's fast jog. As soon as they were out of sight they shifted into a ninja run and bent their course south. The mushroom gathering had taken longer than expected, and they were racing the descending sun all the way home, reaching the camp just before sundown.

"Report," Shikigami said when they presented themselves.

* * *

 **Author's Note** : I've arbitrarily pegged the exchange rate as ten ryo to an American dollar.


	7. Chapter 6: The Calm Before

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

The journey there had been a relastively relaxed steady walk. The journey back was a slow, interminable trudge. This in spite of the fact that they were covering the same distance at more or less the same speed.

Noburi was particularly frustrated. With social skills like his, he should have been able to charm the pants off the villagers (not that this was _that_ sort of mission), not flail around like a kitten being given a surprise bath. Then again, it's not like he'd got the chance to show off his full abilities, not with Kurosawa stealing the spotlight as usual. Father and son indeed. Kurosawa was first among equals at best, and that was only because Shikigami-sensei said so. Yet he acted like he was the team's jōnin instructor, always taking point, always taking charge, always taking everything that was good about being a ninja – the control, the sense of power, the self-assurance that came with being at the top of the food chain – and keeping it all for himself, leaving Noburi with scraps. Even Mori seemed to look up to him, though admittedly it was hard to tell what she was thinking at the best of times.

Mori, huh? Noburi wished he could talk to her, but every time he tried it only seemed to make things worse. Well, if he was to take the place he deserved, in her eyes as much as everywhere else, the first step was to verbally take Kurosawa down a peg, and remind him that he was human like the rest of them.

Hazō was wishing that Wakahisa would shut his yap for once. The boy was like his neighbour's – his former neighbour's – terrier, constantly making noise and demanding attention, but with no good use for it when he finally got it. And Hazō had to concentrate. There was a report to prepare, and it would have to be good. He could already hear the exchange in his mind.

"Is that the best your team could do, Kurosawa? I told you to _act_ like ignorant yokels with no long-term interest in the village, not _be_ them."

"But, sir, you _knew_ we weren't infiltration-spec when you sent us. If you'd assigned us a combat mission…"

"That's enough, Kurosawa. There will be no whining in my hand-picked genin squad. I gave you the opportunity to show everyone, to show _me_ , that you were a competent, well-rounded team capable of rising to challenges outside your comfort zone. You squandered it and disappointed me. Get out of my sight. The three of you are on manual labour duty until further notice."

Hazō had to avoid that at all costs. He'd disappointed his instructors once (though he still wasn't completely clear how), and it had nearly been the end of his career. It had nearly been the end of his _life_. This was his second chance. The shinobi world never gave a third.

The same went for the others. Wakahisa and Mori bore the weight of failure on their shoulders just like he did. They shared the same dangers. And if he was going to live up to the trust they gave him as his teammates, he had to protect them as much as he protected himself (no matter how much he'd rather Wakahisa just fall down a quicksand pit). Right now, his way of protecting them was to once again prepare the perfect report. After all, they _had_ brought back a lot of valuable intel. Yes, they could have found a lot more if they'd manoeuvred their conversations more carefully, but there was no need to draw Shikigami-sensei's attention to that. They'd acquired the necessary resources, or at least a reasonable proportion given the circumstances, and Hazō's report needed to emphasise those successes while keeping missed opportunities firmly in the background (but without hiding them altogether – the moment Hazō tried treating Shikigami-sensei as if he was stupid was the moment he got fed to the alligators).

Their teammate, meanwhile, was scanning the surrounding environment, because Wakahisa was busy displacing his anxiety, and Kurosawa was making plans, and _somebody_ had to pay attention to the death swamp. And for some reason that somebody turned out to be her. Her, watching the dark waters for snakes and leeches and parasitic slimes and lurkers and why did it have to be her? She was a Logistics & Support intern. She wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to be fighting for her life. She wasn't supposed to die –

Keep it together, Kei. Keep it together. Her dad's phrase, but deeply written into her after so many years. Keep it together, Kei. She wasn't going to die. Not necessarily. She had teammates, and superiors, and they were all in this together and all of them had been marked for death by the world's deadliest ninja village and were trapped in a deadly swamp in the middle of a hostile country with no resources and no intel and no allies and no spirals. No spirals.

Inoue-sensei was a good person. Complex, and more than a touch terrifying, as Kei had learned when she'd glimpsed a fragment of the jōnin's true self that evening, but deep down a good person. And she'd shown Kei how to pull out of spirals, how to take a thing and make it your absolute focus until your mind was fully off its previous train of thought.

The road layout had been oddly slanted, and the watchtowers across the west wall irregularly spaced. The palisade there was subtly different too. The woods to the west were full of cedars, yet no cedar had been used in the construction of the houses. A westward expansion of the town had been attempted, but something in the woods had prevented it. Was the fauna significantly more dangerous there than in the rest of the surrounding area? Or something else? Cross-border raiders? Bandits? If she were to consider…

Kei calmed as she wove crystalline networks of analysis around herself like a protective cloak.

-o-

"Do you smell that?" Wakahisa asked abruptly.

Hazō stopped. "Smoke. And… something coppery."

The three exchanged worried glances, then shifted to a more stealthy style of approach for the last few hundred metres to the base.

Smoke. Yes, plenty of smoke. Charred trees. Holes in the stone of the cave mouth, visible from here. Shikigami-sensei's traps, detonated. Blood, but no bodies anywhere. Rubble, as of broken Earth Element techniques. Shattered pieces of everything they'd built.

"We have to look for survivors!" Wakahisa exclaimed, then winced as he realised the volume of his voice.

"There won't be any survivors," Hazō told him, shaking his head slowly. "If our people had won, they'd be here cleaning up. If the hunter-nin had won…"

"There is a possibility," Mori commented in a voice wholly without affect. "If the secret passage is intact, some may have used it to make their escape. In that case, we can reopen it to follow them."

The three genin tentatively entered the cave, expecting an attack at any second. But there was no one inside. Just blood. So much blood. Discarded kunai. Loops of cut ninja wire. Blood. And no bodies.

And no secret passage. Just a pile of charred rocks.

"What do we do now?" Wakahisa asked quietly.

"We get out of here." Hazō bit his lip. "We find somewhere to hide. Then we plan our next steps."

Then _he_ was there.

Captain Momochi Zabuza stood across their only path of escape, a sword of legend on his back and killing intent coming off him in waves. One look at him told Hazō everything. This man was death. Implacable. Inescapable. Inevitable. And finally here.

Captain Zabuza didn't even bother drawing the sword (not that he needed to, not against mere genin). Instead, he slowly pointed at the ground in front of him with his left hand, as if indicating where they should kneel. "One clean stroke."

At that moment, something finally clicked. Why would the missing-nin fight inside the tight confines of the cave instead of scattering in every direction, to escape and regroup later? How long had there even _been_ trees outside the entrance? Most conspicuously, why would Captain Zabuza, who could have taken them out in a fraction of a second, before they even knew he was there, bother doing it like a ritual execution?

"Dispel!"

-o-

"You did better than last time," Inoue-sensei told them with a grin. "But you've got to be quicker. Look for environmental inconsistencies before you worry about behavioural ones. As it is, you and I have a long day ahead of us."

"That was totally unfair!" Noburi burst out. "How were we meant to pay attention to the environment when you made the scenario so extreme?"

"Unfair?" Inoue-sensei gave him an ironic look. "Say, Wakahisa, do you know why some people call me 'Mari the Heartbreaker'?"

"Because you're gorgeous, obviously," Noburi said before his brain caught up with his mouth. When it did, he went an agonising shade of red.

Kurosawa and Mori stared at him as if seeing some mythical beast of legendary stupidity, which didn't help at all.

Inoue-sensei gave him a look.

"A ninja only reveals her thoughts when she intends to. Half portions for you at dinner tonight."

Then she smiled, and _winked_ at him. "But hey, thanks."

Noburi could feel his blush go several shades deeper.

"And if you can't keep your thoughts and feelings under control when there's a beautiful woman in front of you, they'll never let you go on the best kind of missions."

"What are the best kind of missions?"

Inoue-sensei looked at him as if he was slow (which, right now, was completely justified). "Seduction missions, duh."

Noburi was now one step away from spontaneous combustion.

"Back on track," Inoue-sensei said more seriously, "the reason they call me Heartbreaker is that I have stopped five people's hearts with genjutsu alone."

Mori looked horrified. "I thought that was impossible."

"I'm not saying I can make my illusions directly affect the physical world. That's crazy talk. But some people have weak hearts, and a sharp enough spike of genjutsu terror…"

She didn't have to finish it.

"So if you think an illusion of coming home to find out all your friends are dead is too much for you, a real genjutsu user will tear you apart. Better you learn now – how to counter genjutsu, yes, but also how to endure it until you see the clues."

-o-

Kurosawa was practising sparring against Kei on the surface of the water. Unlike his normal, rather impressive, combat performance, here he was displaying a tortoise's dexterity and a housecat's comfort with water.

"No, no," Kei stopped him, eternally patient the way anyone with two twelve-year-old boys on her team had to be. "You're stepping down without enough chakra flowing through your front foot, so you start to sink into the water, and then you release too much to compensate, and you overbalance. You have to incorporate the chakra flow into your footwork – let it flow forwards as your motion flows forwards, shift it as you shift your centre of mass." She began to demonstrate.

"Can I fight him?" Wakahisa suddenly appeared behind Kurosawa.

"Go ahead." Kei gingerly stepped away.

Wakahisa took an aggressive combat stance. As soon as Kurosawa was ready, he lashed out. One, two, three quick strikes to the abdomen. Kurosawa blocked them all, but Kei could tell that something wasn't right. Wakahisa was usually better than this. That high kick wasn't quite high enough. That dodge was far too slow. And the taunts? Where were the endless taunts?

Kei narrowed her eyes. If this was an imitator, it was a dangerous one, since sparring would have dispelled the Transformation Technique. She would have to act quickly if –

Hazō finally landed a solid strike on Wakahisa's solar plexus – and Wakahisa exploded into water. Before Kurosawa could recover his balance, the _real_ Wakahisa reached down from beneath the surface of the water, and sharply pulled him down.

Mori watched, stunned, as Hazō slowly raised himself up, covered from head to toe in mud that made him look like a storybook bog spirit, with a crown of swamp weed covering his head, and some kind of harmless many-legged insect hanging off his nose.

Hazō shambled forwards towards Wakahisa. He opened his mouth – and instead of yelling at him, spurted a swamp's worth of water in Wakahisa's face. Wakahisa staggered back.

"Why, you little…!"

He threw himself at Hazō, missed, and landed face-first in the water. As he scrambled to his feet, his trousers got caught on a tree root, and while Wakahisa came up, the trousers stayed down. Wakahisa, initially oblivious, followed Hazō's horrified stare to his own haddock-pattern boxers, gave a loud squeak (there was no other word for the noise), and dove back underwater with chakra-enhanced speed. But the amplified impact of his landing abruptly shifted the mud, which slid out from beneath Hazō's feet. He collapsed on top of Wakahisa, leaving the boys in a tangle of limbs that could not have been more awkward in every sense of the word.

A sound that neither Hazō nor Wakahisa had ever heard before rang through the swamp. Mori was laughing, loudly, uncontrollably, as if she'd never seen anything funnier. As if she was letting out something that had been buried deep down.

Hazō gave Wakahisa a surreptitious nod of respect. The plan had all been his.


	8. Chapter 7: Distant Thunder

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

"We've been here two weeks now," Shikigami announced gruffly, standing tall atop the rock formation that allowed him to survey his audience. The entire population of 'The Village Hidden in the Swamp'—barring the three genin on guard duty—watched him raptly.

"We've been lucky so far; most of us are still alive, we've had positive contact with the nearest town, and no one's come looking for us," he said. His smile was more a baring of teeth. "Funny thing about luck: the better you are, the more of it you have. Based on how lucky we've been, I'd say we're seriously godsdamn good."

A quiet chorus of "damn right!", "preach it!", and "oorah!" went around the cave.

"Now, we're settled in," he said. "Living quarters are built. Water is being pumped out so we aren't squatting in puddles. We've got two separate escape tunnels. We've got a smoke room for meat, and a vent system to disperse the smoke. We've got a well-stocked larder so we don't have to eat any more of those stinking trail bars." He snorted. "Don't know about the rest of you, but if I had to have one more bite of the stuff, I would have marched into the swamp and let it bloody well have me."

Quiet laughs answered him. The trail rations were a constant source of griping; bars made of compressed nuts, seeds, and jerky held together with honey, they were delicious the first time you tried them and sickening the thirty-first.

"Take a moment to recognize your accomplishments," Shikigami said seriously. "We have escaped the second most powerful ninja village on Earth. We have passed freely through the territory of the _most_ powerful. We have taken up residence in a hellhole of a swamp and made that swamp our chewtoy. Those gators that were so impressive on the way in? I went out yesterday, couldn't find a one of them within two miles. Team Kurosawa"—he nodded at the genin in question—"were the first to meet one of those spiderbears. Bigass hairy monsters, lightning fast, raiton attacks. Bunch of genin folded the thing up like a piece of origami and mailed it home to its mom." Another nod, this time to a team on the other side of the group. "Team Hisakawa met up with that mobile vegetable monster with the toxic spore jets and mind-control tentacles. Turns out, the things are mighty tasty with a bit of salt.

"Time after time, you have shown yourselves to be some of the most badass shinobi it has ever been my pleasure to serve with." He mock-glared at one of the chunin. "Even if _some_ of you snore like a godsdamned ripsaw and keep me up half the night!"

The chunin, a blocky man named Takanaki, laughed and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Sorry, Shikigami-sama!" he said with a smile.

Shikigami snorted. "Well, given how you blew the everloving crap out of that nest of fire-breathing ants, _and_ waterproofed my living quarters, I'll let it go. _This_ time, anyway."

His face got serious again. "It's taken a bit of time, but we've got our feet under us. The short-term challenges are dealt with, now it's time to look to the future. There are three main challenges facing us: Mist, Leaf, and growth.

"Mist is simple: Zabuza-sama is hunting us, and he's going to find us eventually. Now, we all know what a murder-boner Yagura-sama has for people like us; he'll have told Zabuza-sama to bring our heads back on a plate."

A nervous sussurance went around the circle. Shikigami patted the air to quiet everyone down.

"Unclench your sphincters," he told them. "He's impressive as hell, but Zabuza-sama is just a man. He still puts his boxers on one leg at a time."

"He doesn't wear boxers!" Inoue shouted with a raunchy grin. "He can't find ones big enough to fit!"

There was a surge of catcalls from around her.

"I will leave that to our resident expert," Shikigami said. "Personally, that's a bit more information about Zabuza-sama's crotch than I would have preferred. Now, if I may continue?" He waited with exaggerated politeness until she nodded.

"Like I said, Zabuza-sama is going to show up," he said. "He's going to do the standard hunter-nin thing: send a water clone in to talk to us, promise to take us back unharmed, give us the chance to plead our case, blah blah blah." He snorted. "He's good at it too; I went on two or three missions with him back when I was a chunin. He's as smooth with his words as he is with that damn sword. Over the years he's actually talked half a dozen missing-nin into 'coming in from the cold.' Damn fools.

"Anyway, once he sees that we're not stupid enough to go for the trap, he'll start hanging around the camp, picking off anyone he can. I'm not going to lie, it'll be bad; there's a reason he's called the Demon. Still, demon or man, he's not stupid; he won't risk a frontal assault against four jonin, a dozen chunin, and a whole pack of genin who have demonstrated more combat capacity than most chunin." He paused to glare. "Get those smiles off your faces! What, you think because I say one nice thing you can let your heads swell up?! If I want you feeling happy, I'll damn you tell you to be happy!" He continued mock-glaring furiously until everyone settled down again.

"Over the next few days I'll be coordinating with the other jonin and the senior chunin to design traps, sensors, and defenses throughout the swamp. You think this place is a hellhole now? By the time we're done the combined forces of Leaf and Mist together couldn't march through here without getting their gonads blown up into their necks.

"We'll also be looking for strategic assets. In particular, we're going to go out recruiting for a seal master, at least one medic, and all the missing-nin we can find who are smart enough to be interesting and good enough to be worth our time. Suggestions are welcome from the peanut gallery as well.

"That takes care of Mist. Next is Leaf. Leaf is a lot easier than Mist; they aren't actively looking for us. Oh, I'm sure they've got some people scouting the area; they saw our tracks on the way in, so they'll want to keep an eye out for a while. They aren't going to be putting a huge force on it, though. Our tracks showed us cutting through Fire on a course for Grass and then disappearing into the swamp. They don't want to come into this swamp; we saw that on the way in. Most likely, they'll figure we're either dead or out of the country. So long as we don't actually wave our bits in their faces and shout 'all Leaves are pansies' at them, they're not going to bother with us. Doesn't mean we don't need to be ready for them, but they are a longer term issue.

"Most important challenge we're facing is growth. We need to recruit more nin. We need a sealing master. We need a proper medic. We need to find a steady income source. Taking ninja missions per se would fall into the category of insult-shouting and bits-waving that I previously mentioned to be undesirable, but there are plenty of other options.

"The swamp has resources to sell. Hotaru said she might be able to salvage the raiton-generating organs from a spiderbear corpse, if she could get to it fresh. If she can do it, there's all sorts of possibilities there.

"We can present ourselves to various towns as civilian hunters and get paid to exterminate the local wildlife; it's a solid cover because there really are civilians who make a living doing that." He waved over at Team Kurosawa. "That bunch of troublemakers is going to be trying out the 'exterminate' part later today, although someone else will handle the actual bargaining.

"As I mentioned before, we'll be looking to recruit. You can't be a ninja village without at least one seal master and one medic; next week Inoue will be leading a team to find one of each and bring them back. It will need to be a complete vanish; no evidence whatsoever, so there's going to be some competition for the job. If you think you're hard enough, leave your name with Inoue-sensei and start thinking. You won't know the conditions of the challenge until it starts but the basic parameters will be 'kidnap high-value ninja, return him to village while leaving no trace'. Once he's here, Inoue and a few others will have time to...convince him that he should make his home here from now on.

"Right now we are a tiny village, but I intend for us to grow, and to become strong. Those of you who are jonin and chunin: you will be the leaders of this village, the cadre that sets our policies and recruits, trains, and shapes the next generation.

"Those of you who are genin. Right now you are teenagers at best. You have the experience, the knowledgebase, and the maturity of teenagers—which is to say, not much. This is not your fault; youth is a condition that is cured only by time. How much time it requires is up to you; five years from now—hell, _one_ year from now—you will have the power of jonin. You will not have the _authority_ of jonin until you prove you're worthy of that trust. None of you are stupid, and I see a great deal of potential in all of you. If you want to live up to that potential, if you want to be worthy of a place of respect among the adults, then you need to learn to be leaders, not followers. I expect to see you stretching yourselves and growing faster than you think you can. I expect to hear suggestions. I expect to hear intelligent questions. Most challenging of all, I expect to see awareness as to when it's appropriate to ask questions and when it's appropriate to shut your yap and follow orders. Am I clearly understood?!"

"YES, SHIKIGAMI-SAMA!" bellowed the genin.

"Good!" Shikigami yelled back. "Then get the hell outta my cave and go earn that trust!"

o-o-o-o

The trip out of the swamp went by faster than ever before, as the genin were too excited to stop talking. The routes in and out were well mapped by this time, and they dealt with the hazards with unthinking ease—Noburi whipped several bloodbeaks out of the air without pausing in his enthusiastic babble about spear-lily farming as perimeter defense. A razorsnake leaped at them from under the water; Hazo was too absorbed in brainstorming with Mori to notice that he had grabbed the snake out of the air, twisted its head around, and tossed it aside without even noticing he'd done it. Even Mori was excited. Ideas for improved logistics poured out of her so fast she tripped over her words, her mouth unable to keep up with her brain.

The excitement carried them the full two hours to the town; it was only with some effort that they put it away and focused down on the mission.

The planning had been simple, because the basic plan was simple: find a lone steelback, trap it, drown it. The only awkwardness had happened when Hazou had been thinking about contingencies.

"If it manages to break the whip, I should be able to stab it from in front—it won't have bristles on its nose," Hazou had said.

"I like that plan," Noburi had replied. "After you slash your arm to ribbons on the wall'o'knives and it tramples you into the mud, I expect Shikigami-sama will give me my own team." He had turned to his other teammate with a magnanimous wave. "Mori, you can be my second."

Mori hadn't said a word, just studied him for long seconds until Noburi's confident body language faded.

"Hm," Mori had said, before looking aside and vanishing back into her own world.

Then, of course, planning had turned to executing.

"Incoming!" Hazou said, pelting out of the trees at a speed that would have been a top-speed sprint for a civilian but was only a moderate dash for a ninja. Behind him came eight hundred pounds of furious animal, squealing furiously and gnashing its teeth. Two-foot gleaming-steel bristles stuck out of it in all directions.

"What did you do?! You were supposed to find a small one!" Noburi shouted, opening his cask and pouring the water into a twenty-foot whip.

"This was the smallest one I could find!" Hazou said, dropping the looped end of his ninja wire behind him and leaping for the giant ash tree they'd determined would be their ambush point. They'd originally intended to use the immense oak twenty yards to the east...until they discovered that the whole thing was coated in tiny ants whose shells exuded acid. Mori had gotten acid burns across much of her forearm; fortunately, Noburi had managed to wash the acid off before it did enough to incapacitate her.

The genin had barely gotten his feet into the tree when the boar's left front leg stepped into the open loop of ninja wire. Hazou hurled himself off the branch, blasting chakra through his feet to fire himself at the ground. The boar outweighed him by six to one; he needed as much speed as he could get in order to yank its foot to the side and make it trip. The pigs swerved lifting its foot out of the loop just as Hazou yanked it closed. Squonking in fury, it charged at where Hazou had just touched the ground, clearly determined to rip the genin's guts open and dance on them.

An errant beam of sunlight filtered through the trees and gleamed off the loop of Mori's ninja wire as it wrapped with delicate perfection around the hog's head just behind its stubby ears, lacing through the forest of spikes without being diverted. The genin leaped off her tree branch, swinging herself down and around the thick trunk in a descending spiral before latching herself to the bark with the most powerful tree-walking she'd ever attempted. Eight hundred pounds of hog hit the limits of the ninja wire at fifteen miles an hour; the windings around the tree trunk kept the wire from being pulled out of Mori's hands.

The loop pulled tight and the pig nearly decapitated itself; blood fountained everywhere, and the pig dropped, instantly dead.

It took a moment for Noburi and Hazou to finish blinking in shock and cautiously approach the pig carcass. By the time they did, Mori was standing in front of it, hands clasped behind her back as she bent to inspect the bristles.

"Uh...," said Noburi.

"I thought you were just supposed to catch its leg," Hazou said in amusement. "Didn't we have this whole cunning plan where you and I were going to each get a loop around one foot and hold the thing immobile while Nobby drowned it? What happened to the plan?"

"You missed," Mori said absently, before going back to studying the bristles.

o-o-o-o

The next three hours were spent on cleanup; they very carefully filled in all the damage the boar had done to the ground, replacing as much of the turf as possible, brushing out all the tracks they could manage, and covering up as much as possible of the blood. They couldn't do much to conceal the damage to the treebark and the gashes where the ninja wire had dug in, but those weren't quite so obvious.

By the time they finished, the only signs that there had been a battle were the damage to the trees and the eight-hundred-pound skinned-out carcass. The latter was easily dealt with; they simply poured a trail of blood from the acid-ants tree to the carcass. After a few minutes observation to make sure the ants followed the trail, the team was on their way home. The storage scroll that Shikigami-sensei had loaned them ("If I find so much as _one tiny stain_ , I will make a replacement scroll from your skin!") was stuffed full of hundreds of bristles and several dozen pounds of what was probably going to be delicious meat. The excitement and pride of the hunt buoyed them up on the way back, making the miles fly by effortlessly. Mori blushed when the boys teased her and called her 'Mori the Mighty, Slayer of Pigs!' but she didn't seem all that bothered.

Four o'clock found them most of the way home, skating smoothly across Red Route One, the most direct of the mapped paths leading to the lair from their entry point into the swamp. They were making the southwest turn to avoid the waterskater nest when the distinctive _BOOM!_ of an explosive tag echoed across the swamp from the east.


	9. Chapter 8: Gust Front

Hazō quickly weighed retreat versus advance. If there was a friendly ninja over there, and one in enough danger to use exploding tags, then there was no time to lose. By the time Team Kurosawa reported back to base and got backup, the person in need of help would almost certainly be dead. And on the off-chance that it was a neutral ninja (perhaps the inhabitant of that mysterious shelter from earlier), rescuing them from a threat would be a great way to establish first contact.

But if it was an enemy… well, if it was an enemy, then they'd need to find out as fast as possible so they could warn the base. And the enemy couldn't be that tough if they were being forced to use exploding tags against the local wildlife – something even Hazō's genin team hadn't needed to do so far. Of course, if Hazō's assumptions were wrong, then he and his team would die horribly. Just like most missions.

Oh. There was one more possibility.

"Dispel!"

Nothing happened, which was definitely for the best. A genjutsu user would mean a chūnin or jōnin enemy.

Hazō quickly made a series of hand signals. Primary. Stealth. Secondary. Speed. Pincer Formation Three. He didn't know the sign for the Water Clone Technique, but improvised. Water. Clone. Take Point.

Wakahisa's two clones moved to the front of the formation, and the party began to move.

After a few seconds, Mori, still facing forward, suddenly moved her hand out towards Wakahisa, and made a series of signs. Abort. Ninjutsu. Risk of Exposure.

The movement being in Wakahisa's peripheral vision, it took him a second to notice and react. In that second, one of his clones moved too close to a clearly visible banshee lizard, and the creature let loose one of its characteristic paralytic shrieks before vanishing into the water.

Damn damn damn. Hazō had overlooked, and Wakahisa had failed to remind him, that water clones only had a small fraction of the original's skill and power – and Wakahisa's sneaking skills were already the minimum required to qualify as a genin. Now anything in the target area (and quite a large range nearby) would know that they were coming.

The team abandoned any pretence of stealth, and ran.

-o-

Of course, the area was completely empty.

"Great job," a frustrated and humiliated Hazō told Wakahisa. "I thought Mist didn't use distraction genin anymore, but since I'm clearly wrong, I'll get Shikigami-sensei to issue you the standard black pyjamas."

"Oh, yeah?" Wakahisa shot back, his face a vivid shade of pink. "Well, maybe it is my fault – for trusting our glorious leader to pay attention when giving orders. You're supposed to know your teammates' abilities off by heart instead of –"

"Boys."

If looks could kill, Mori would never have been assigned to Logistics & Support.

"Moving on…" Hazō said once the petrification had worn off, "we need to fan out and look for clues as to what happened here. Five minutes, then we report back to Shikigami-sensei."

The source of the explosion wasn't hard to find. There was a big, roughly spherical dent in a nearby ridge, the remaining soil covered with blood. If there were any other remains, Hazō suspected, they were somewhere deep under the water, and would probably be consumed by the local fauna before any detailed investigation could locate them.

What was odd was that there were no other signs of battle. No ninjutsu damage, no kunai or shuriken sticking out of any surfaces, no lesser predators drawn by blood in the water. Could it be that –

"Kurosawa, Wakahisa, you need to see this."

Mori led them to a nearby tree. Something glinted in the sunlight among the branches. No, not something. A forehead protector, its location about right for a small object thrown clear by the explosion.

The sight of its torn blue cloth sent a chill down Hazō's spine in a way that the splatter of blood on the ridge had not. Forehead protectors were an easily-replaced and rarely-useful piece of armour, but they were also sacred. The forehead protector was the spirit of a ninja; it was what you brought back when you couldn't retrieve the body.

And the symbol this one bore consisted of five lines. The four wavy lines of water-unbound-by-form, slashed by the sharp horizontal line of the missing-nin. Hazō's mother had explained to him once, in a particularly morose mood, that some missing-nin kept their forehead protectors the same, indicating that they had been forced to leave the village but were loyal in spirit. Others put a slash through theirs as if cutting away their past, faking the original marking only when an objective demanded it. To them, wearing an unaltered forehead protector was like wearing a dead lover's clothing.

What the forehead protector said, in short, was that an ally had died here.

"Check it out, but don't move it. The location might be important," Hazō said softly.

Wakahisa quickly found himself something else to investigate, while Mori obediently climbed up.

Her face was completely expressionless when she climbed down.

"I know this one."

At Hazō's questioning look, she elaborated. "Inoue-sensei told me that the scratch in the lower left-hand corner was from when a Hidden Rock sniper nearly killed her. She often tells. Told. She often told that story because of what she did to the sniper afterwards."

There was someone nearby powerful enough to take out Inoue-sensei. No prizes for guessing who.

"Well," the voice came from behind him. "So far, all according to plan."

-o-

Hazō whirled around, a kunai already in his hand. But what he saw froze him in his tracks.

Inoue-sensei, completely unharmed, gave him a friendly smile. "I knew you wouldn't have any trouble with those steelbacks."

Hazō's mind went into overdrive. If Inoue-sensei was dead, this was an impostor. But an impostor wouldn't pretend to be her right when they found evidence of her death. Therefore Inoue-sensei wasn't dead.

If Inoue-sensei wasn't dead but it looked like she was, then she'd faked her own death. If she'd faked her own death, she wouldn't want any witnesses saying she was alive. That meant she was about to kill them. Talking to them first was odd, but it fit her character. She'd been their teacher, if only briefly, and that meant she'd want to say goodbye.

Knowing he was probably already dead, Hazō threw the kunai anyway.

It passed right through Inoue-sensei as if she were a ghost.

"Dispel!"

Everything stayed exactly the same. Hazō stared at his hands, still in the sealing position, as if they'd turned into venomous serpents.

"Dispel! Dispel! Dispel!"

Nothing.

"Good reflexes, Hazō!" Inoue-sensei beamed, unconcerned. "Here's the thing, though. A genjutsu mistress facing three genin who only just learned the technique? From that same mistress, no less? I can just overwhelm you with pure chakra. It's not something that comes up very much, because if you're that much stronger than the enemy, you don't normally need to bother with genjutsu in the first place."

Then there was only silence. No background noise of lethal swamp monsters seeking their prey. No bubbling of random gases escaping the water. Not even a breath of wind disturbing the leaves on the few nearby trees. Just silence.

"Are you going to kill us?" Even now, Mori's voice was barely audible.

"Come on, kids. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn't stop for a chat first." Inoue-sensei rolled her eyes.

"Then…" Mori's eyes widened with some peculiar combination of fear and hope. "You're going to ask us to run away with you!"

"You see? This is why I love my Keiko!" In a blur of unreal motion, Inoue-sensei appeared in front of Mori, and wrapped her arms around the girl in an affectionate hug.

Mori went completely still, her arms down at her sides and her expression blank. Inoue-sensei winced, quickly disengaged and took a step back.

"Anyway, you've got it in one."

Wakahisa frowned sceptically. "Why would you want to run away? You and Shikigami-sensei gave that whole speech about how we had everything covered."

"Shikigami, huh?" Inoue-sensei sighed. "You know, when he described his plan to me and Kanna back in Mist, it all sounded perfect. Save lives, avoid the coming war, found a new village based on new ideals, do this, do that, contingency plans for absolutely everything…

"But I don't think he can pull it off anymore. Leaf is coming for us, Zabuza is coming for us, and Shikigami doesn't have control of the big picture the way he thought he would. His plan to beat Zabuza? It's suicide, and even if it works, it doesn't solve anything. So Zabuza dies. All that's going to happen is that the Mizukage is suddenly going to take us a lot more seriously. And I don't need to tell you why that would be bad.

"I don't want to die, kids. Rarely have, never will. But I'm an infiltration specialist. I know when to cut my losses and run, and I know how to make a clean getaway. That's why I've spent the last week pretending to pretend that I wasn't in despair. That's why I'm using up half the blood in my storage seals and why I've chosen a point on one of the more frequent patrol routes. When Zabuza turns up, all he's going to get out of whoever he tortures is that I took my own life. Maybe he'll believe it and maybe he won't, but either way it beats sitting in that cave waiting to get killed."

"You really think we can't beat Zabuza?" Hazō asked.

"Come on now. You think the Mizukage is going to send one of his star jōnin alone against worse than three-to-one odds? I don't know what's coming any more than you do, but it's going to be worse than Shikigami claims. Maybe we can win with the defensible location and the knowledge of the swamp and its dangers, or maybe Zabuza picks us off one by one and lets whoever is left in the cave to starve. I won't pretend I don't love gambling, but the Legendary Sucker herself wouldn't take those odds."

The logic, now Hazō looked at it, was inescapable. They'd only ever talked about facing Zabuza himself, which would be scary but manageable with three jōnin against one, but they didn't really know anything about what Mist was going to do. For that matter, it was only an assumption that the Mizukage would send Zabuza. It could be someone else, someone with abilities completely different to the ones Shikigami-sensei was preparing to counter.

"All right," he nodded. "Why us? You know we'd only get in your way."

Before Inoue-sensei could answer, Hazō's own mind abruptly filled in the blank on the answer sheet.

"You want us as sacrificial pawns to slow down pursuit."

"It's always a pleasure hearing a genin think like a ninja," Inoue-sensei told him. "But the truth is, maybe, despite our differences, I'm a little like Shikigami after all. He knew the mission was going to have a high casualty rate, and he could have bailed on his own, but instead he decided to save everyone he could. I can't do that, but I can at least save someone. And you guys? Well, Keiko here is the most adorable thing ever, and I get the feeling that if I invited just her, she'd ask me to bring you guys along anyway.

"Not that I mind too much. Mako and I go way back – went way back – and I'd feel bad if I let her one of her genin trainees die."

Warned by some primal instinct, Hazō tried to dodge the inevitable. But Inoue-sensei cheated, and the very fabric of unreality twisted and warped around his head, ruffling his hair while Inoue-sensei remained at long range. Hazō scowled, and made a note to brush up on his Dispelling Technique.

"And Noburi? I want to see if you can fulfill your potential. You could be a real ladykiller one day, if you can just learn how to use your tongue properly – and rest assured, that's something I can teach you in detail." She gave Wakahisa a mischievous wink, causing the latter to do his best beetroot imitation.

Then the smile dropped off her face. "Serious time now. The way I see it, you've got four options. You can come with me. I won't lie to you: it won't be easy. Small groups of missing-nin get taken out all the time. But on the other hand, I'm the best when it comes to going unnoticed, and in my plan we won't be hanging around next door to the world's strongest ninja village going 'hey, we're a great big potential threat, come and deal with us.' As an extra layer of paranoia, I won't tell you where I'm going unless you're coming with, but I can sum it up in five words. The. Hell. Away. From. Here.

"Option two: you throw yourselves on Zabuza's mercy. If you walk out into the swamp making it really clear that you're just three genin trying to surrender, he might be generous. Mist must be pissed at the loss of manpower, and getting some of it back will earn Zabuza brownie points with the Mizukage. You will have to tell him every tiniest detail about the base and the rest of the group, meaning you'll be signing their death sentence, but if you're OK with that, and if you play up the 'we were forced into it by a bunch of scary jōnin' angle, Mist may take you back into the fold.

"Option three: you start a rebellion. I'm not the only ninja questioning Shikigami's strategy, just the only one with the guts to take action. I'm not saying you try to fight Shikigami head-on, because the man is a combat monster, but if you and a bunch of others decide to straight-up walk out of there, what's he going to do? Kill you himself? Of course, a bigger group is also more likely to run into trouble on their way out.

"Final option: you follow Shikigami. He thinks he can take on all comers until he can strike some kind of deal with Leaf. I don't. Even if he manages to deal with Mist, Leaf has a hundred reasons to wipe us out and maybe a dozen to let us live. Hidden Swamp was a beautiful idea, and maybe if things were different it might even have worked. But we fled from a village whose ruler will do anything to eliminate traitors, and we chose to hide next door to a village so powerful that we can only exist at its mercy.

"Still, it's your life, and it's your decision."

She blinked as if remembering something. "Oh, yeah. Whatever you choose, I won't hurt you. You're in a forbidden genjutsu called Truth Lost in the Fog. As long as I'm willing to pay the price, I can choose for you to wake up as if you were dreaming, and forget everything you saw and heard.

"Now, make your choice. I have to be gone before the next patrol arrives."


	10. Chapter 9: Cutting the Cord

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

Hazou's brain was in overdrive, running the possibilities with a smoothness that felt like the way his body moved when he drew on his family's power.

Agree to go? No. This could be a loyalty test, in which case agreeing to go would be fatal...no, not fatal. Shikigami-sensei couldn't afford to kill off the members of his tiny village. It would bench the team, though. They'd never be let out of the cave again.

Decide to stay? No. It could be a sincere offer, in which case refusing to go might be fatal regardless of Inoue-sensei's claims that she wouldn't hurt them.

Actually, it might not even be Inoue-sensei. It could be something else entirely - a Leaf ninja, Zabuza-sama, a swamp monster, something - in which case the right move was to attack immediately. Of course, if it was Inoue-sensei - or, gods forbid, Zabuza-sama! - then attacking would be extremely painful or fatal. No, on second thought, the chances that this was anything other than Ionue-sensei were slim - she had shown too much knowledge of the team, and too many of Inoue-sensei's personality traits.

Stall until the next patrol came by? No, she wouldn't wait.

Lie? No. She was a deception expert, there was no way the team could play her.

That left only one option, and it was wildly uncomfortable; years of being taught to be reserved, to keep one's self hidden and protected, shouted at him not to show vulnerability. He firmly stamped on the embarrassment and spoke from the heart.

"Sensei, please don't leave," Hazou said, doing his best to let his sincerity show in his voice. It was easier to show sincerity on his face than in his voice; he had once walked in on momma sitting on the edge of her bed, her face buried in poppa's old flannel shirt and her shoulders shaking in quiet sobs. It was easy to wear the same expression he'd had at that moment, the more so because it was the one his face wanted to wear anyway.

"Please, sensei; we need you," he said. "How will Mori cope without you around to calm her down? Who's going to teach me to do more than punch things? Who's going to teach Wakahisa enough self-control to be sent on the good missions? Who's going to look after us - not as ninja, but as...well, as kids growing up? Shikigami-sensei is a great man and a good teacher, but you're the only one who has worried about us as people. Please don't go."

Inoue looked at him for a moment, then smiled sadly. "Sorry, kid," she said. "I'm going, one way or another. You three are good kids and I'll miss you, but I'm not willing to die. Shikigami-san had a good plan, but it's toes-up now. Are you coming or not?"

Damnit. What to do? Either choice could be wrong, not choosing was definitely wrong...the others weren't saying anything, and just waiting too long might well be taken as refusing the offer.

For long seconds, Hazou looked uncertainly at Inoue before turning to his team. "Mori, Wakahisa, what do you say? Personally, I think we should accept the memory wipe and stay with Swamp. All of us being together and staying in this swamp are the biggest things going for us right now, and I want to stick to Shikigami-sensei's plan, but I won't make that decision for you. This might end up being your only decent shot at leaving before Mist or Leaf stomps us down. If both of you want to go with Inoue-sensei, I'll go with you."

"I would like to go," Mori said quietly, looking at the ground. "Our loyalties are challenged, torn between Shikigami-sensei and Inoue-sensei. Both have been good to us in different ways, and neither has a perfect plan. If I must choose, however, I choose Inoue-sensei; she helped me with problems that Shikigami-sense did not notice, and I see fewer issues in her plan."

All three of the others turned to look at Wakahisa. The young genin fidgeted, trying to meet their gazes and failing.

"Uh…," he said.

Hazou waited a moment to see if his teammate would say anything else. When it became clear that he wouldn't, Hazou spoke up. "Wakahisa," he said as gently as he could. "I know things aren't totally smooth between us, but you're a good guy and a good teammate. You need to do what you think is right; neither of us is going to blame you no matter what you choose."

Wakahisa swallowed, his face shouting how badly he was torn. He eyed his teammates carefully, then looked at Inoue. "Sensei, why now?" he asked. "You said that Shikigami-sensei had this plan back in Mist; why did you go with him if you thought it wasn't going to work? We've been here two weeks and you're only leaving now - what changed?"

Inoue sighed. "It's complicated," she said. "It's part logical, part intuitive. Shikigami-san had these clever plans with lots of contingencies. I thought we were going good when we broke trail with all the sailing and waterwalking. We were followed coming through Leaf, although we never got spotted. Call it one to the good and one to the ohcrap.

"Shikigami-san figured that if we could stay clear of Zabuza-sama for a few weeks, Yagura-sama wouldn't be able to keep us a top priority; he'd put a bounty on us like any other missing-nin - probably a big bounty, but still - and then go on to more immediate concerns. Like, for example, the war that was sure to start with Leaf. Going after the Noodle-brains was going to piss off Fire and cause a war between Mist and Leaf. If it did we had a great chance of getting lost in the shuffle."

She sat down tiredly, wrapping her arms around her knees and looking sad. "The chance of the war was part of why we went, y'know? Last time around, the death toll was horrendous, both among ninja and civilians, and none of us wanted to see that happen again. We thought that if the war happened we'd get forgotten about in favor of bigger fish, and we hoped that maybe the drop in combat strength from our absence would be enough that Yagura-sama would back off on getting tangled up in another war. Either way, there was some profit; we could help ourselves, and maybe we could help our village.

"Shikigami-san's wanted to be Kage for a long time, but it was never going to happen in Mist; as strong as he is, he's not quite strong enough. Which is a pity because, honestly, he'd be good at it. He's strong, smart, charismatic, knows how to delegate, and - underneath that hardass exterior - is one of the most moral men I know. Mist would have flourished under him. If the war had happened we could have made a good go of it here, too. Doesn't look like it's going to, though; I was in town a couple days ago, and there was talk of an old man traveling through. From the description it sounds like Leaf's resident spymaster and diplomancer, the Toad Sage. If he's here, there's no war going on, and if it's held off this long it's probably not starting up in the immediate future."

She flashed her infectious grin at them. "Pity he didn't wait around a day or so longer; I would have loved to meet him." She clasped her hands in front of her innocently (not-so-coincidentally pressing her bosom together for extra-impressive cleavage) and made bedroom eyes.

"Ooh, are you really the famous Jiraiya-sama?" she purred. "Ooh, I've heard so much about you! And I just love your Icha-Icha Paradise - is there any chance that I could model for a character?" She leaned in, taking a deep breath and making her eyes even more soulful. "I'd do anything to be in your wonderful novels, Jiraiya-sempai!"

She snorted and dropped the act. "He'd have seen through it, of course...after breakfast, anyway. Still, we always knew we were going to have to talk to Leaf eventually, and this would have been a great way to make, shall we say, positive first contact.

"The timing sucks, though. We planned for a lot of things, but not for Jiraiya-san showing up within two damn weeks. If we'd had the chance to get established and then reach out on our own, we would have had a good chance of getting client-state status, or at least being allowed to immigrate. Right now, though, we aren't strong enough to look impressive, and his presence would make it look like we'd been panicked into coming forward instead of doing it on our own terms."

"Do we have to reach out now?" Wakahisa asked. "Couldn't we wait, get established, then talk to them when we were ready? And you said the war would distract them. It could still happen, right?"

"Nice try, kid, but no," Inoue said. "Like I said, if Jiraiya-san's around that means there's no war going on or even on the horizon. And him being here means we have to assume we're blown. I mean, sure, maybe he's just doing a normal intelligence-gathering sweep, checking in with his contacts in the area. Not the way to bet, though, and a swamp is about the worst imaginable place to hide from a toad summoner."

"Why did we come here, sensei?" Mori asked. "Why not flee to Snow, or even out of the Elemental Nations?"

Inoue shrugged. "There weren't any really good choices," she said. "We talked about looping back, hiding out in Wolf or Vegetable - and by the way, who in the hells names their country 'the Land of Vegetables'? I mean, that's just asking to get your asses kicked." She snorted. "Anyway, we talked about hiding somewhere over there, but that left us too close to Mist for comfort. We could have headed for somewhere in the Kanashii Ocean, but the choices there were either 'be on top of a ninja village' or 'be somewhere where there's no civilians so we have to become farmers.' Snow was out - none of us had cold-weather survival experience.

"That put us on the mainland. Going to any of the smaller nations would have left us camping right next to a ninja village, and even the minor villages would be able to take us out if they wanted to. Wind is huge, but it's mostly flat and they have a ton of scouts that fly around on gliders; too easy to get spotted from the air. We couldn't blend in with the population in Earth, and Lightning puts us back in the 'cold weather survival' problem."

She shrugged. "The swamp was the best of a lot of bad choices. It's near a large number of ninja villages but it's ground that no one else wants. It's nominally in Fire, which means the adjacent villages aren't likely to send anyone into the area, but it's far enough out in the Great Bugger-All that Leaf doesn't spend a lot of time here. At the same time, if we could build an actual village here and then apply to Leaf for client-state status, we'd be between them and all their closest enemies."

"Sensei, isn't Fire allied with many of the nations here?" Mori asked.

Inoue laughed. "You're just adorable, you know that?" The words could have been harsh, but the tone of fondness took the sting out. "Yeah, they're theoretically allies with most of them, but alliances between ninja nations are fragile things. There's been a major war every generation for a hundred years, and we're about due - that's why we were giving such good odds on the Noodle Incident sparking things off between Mist and Leaf. Ninja move too fast to be able to find and stop an incoming strike force, but if we were here and provably allied to Fire then none of the neighbors would have wanted to bypass us to strike at Leaf."

"'Provably allied'?" Mori asked.

Inoue grimaced. "Yeah...let's not go there right now. It wasn't my favorite part of the plan. Anyway, the swamp is easy to hide in, the area around it is one of the more lightly patrolled in Fire, and Shikigami-san knew about the cave system, which makes a good fort and a good hide. Best of some bad choices."

She glanced up at the sun. "Anyway, time's a-wastin'. I'm leaving in sixty seconds, and you kids need to make your choice."

Everyone looked at Wakahisa again.

He was silent for a long moment, warring emotions on his face, before finally sighing and nodding. "I would like to go," he said.

Hazou's mouth tightened, but he forced his face to smooth out. "Very well," he said. "Then it's unanimous; we're all going."

Inoue bounced to her feet and clapped her hands gleefully. She waved casually and the world shimmered around them as the genjutsu released.

"Come on," she said. "We're going to put a few miles under us, then we'll sit down and make more definite plans. You wanted to learn more than punching? Great, first thing to learn is tactical planning; in this case that means 'where are we going' and 'what are we doing when we get there'." You know what the map looks like; start thinking about where we should hide out, how we're going to live when we get there, and what we can do to not get discovered and slaughtered in a gory and horrible fashion by someone from Leaf, or Mist, or whoever."

Mori started to open her mouth and Inoue waved her to silence. "Yes, yes," the jonin said airly. "You're working with inadequate information. Welcome to the real world, kiddo. You come up with preliminary plans based on what you do know, then I'll give you an infodump on the various countries and you can refine your plans."

Team Kurosawa exchanged looks; as flippant as the words were, they still weren't entirely reassuring.

Inoue laughed. "Unclench your sphincters, as Shikigami-san would say. I've got some pretty good thoughts on all this; this is just an oral exam. Once we make camp I'll expect a clear statement of your chosen destination, the reasons for your choice, and a general outline of our activities for the next two weeks. No sacred cows - the reasons why a group of thirty ninja should or shouldn't go somewhere aren't relevant to whether a group of four should. Now, give me a minute to fake your deaths and then we're out of here. Follow me, and make sure you only step on the water; don't touch any grasses, reeds, or anything else that could leave a trace."

Without another word she snatched the hitai-ate off their heads, scorched them with a quick lightning jutsu, and scattered them and a bit more blood around. She herded them back onto the water, taking care to erase their tracks as she went, then studied the scene for a long minute. She stepped in and made some minor adjustments - flattening a patch of grass here, wiping out a last footprint there - then nodded in satisfaction.

"Welcome to the grave, kids and kiddies," she said. "How's it feel to be dead? No no, that was rhetorical! C'mon, let's get outta here." With a casual wave she turned and flitted away, stepping so lightly that she barely made a ripple. Unhappy but determined, Team Kurosawa followed in her wake.


	11. Chapter 10: Those Left Behind

(Hoster's Note: If you'd like to see the full quest with all the chapters now, google 'sufficientvelocity marked for death' and click the top link.)

Then…

In. Out. In. Out. Loop. Press down. In. Out.

Hana's hands moved without her as they continued to sew another chūnin jacket. At times like these, she considered the Iron Nerve to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the tedium of having to work at the correct stitching every single time, and of constantly watching out for errors, had to be maddening. She didn't know how the civilian workers in Supplies managed it. On the other hand, once she'd worked out the perfect pattern for the task, plus the corrective ones for the types of mistake she still made, the manual labour hardly engaged her mind at all. Which left her plenty of time to worry about Hazō, and how he was getting on with his first major mission. Was this how it had been for her mother the first time Hana had gone out and risked not coming back?

Hana looked down, and deliberately focused her gaze on her hands. The chūnin jackets were a mediocre but consistent source of side income, supplementing her mission pay and helping to keep the bills from soaring out of control. There was always a grey market for such supplies, frequently used by ninja who'd lost mission gear through bad luck or poor management, and didn't want the fact to be noted on their requisition records. Certain clerks in the lower echelons of the Mizukage's Office ruled their tiny domains with an iron fist, and could interpret such patterns as promotion-inhibiting incompetence at best, or as selling military-issued gear in the black market at worst. The latter was seen as an act of sabotage, and the lives of convicted saboteurs (or "saboteurs") were invariably short and horrific.

What mattered for Hana was that producing surplus gear and selling it to loyal ninja was not illegal as such, though she'd probably be in some sort of trouble if she were caught by the authorities. It wasn't her best option, but for the last several days, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched, and that took certain more lucrative and less legal activities off the table.

Knock. Knock.

Ominous timing, given where her thoughts had been wandering. In another flawlessly practised movement, Hana slid the unfinished jacket into a drawer of her table and threw the sewing supplies into the nearby storage chest, then rose to open the door.

Standardised uniforms. Patterned masks. Oh, shit.

-o-

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The light nearly blinded Hana, while keeping the interrogator submerged in shadow. It was one of those clichés that existed because it worked. She could hear her own heartbeat, feel every second grate against her nerves as if she were eye to eye with a predator and her sense of time was being slowed by adrenaline.

There was just one thing she could see, right on the edge of the desk, reaching out from the darkness. A hand, an old person's hand, covered in fine black swirls that could have been tattoos or seals. Its index finger kept tapping on the table at irregular intervals, and running a nail across the wood in brief scratches, drawing her attention whenever she felt close to regaining her centre.

"Kurosawa Hana." The voice was androgynous, and too young for that hand. "You will answer a series of questions. You will volunteer all related information, making no judgement as to its relevance. Your degree of cooperation will be assessed, and if it is considered insufficient, you will be passed on to our sister branch for processing."

Tap. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. As if peeling away the layers.

"You will provide a full character description of your son Kurosawa Hazō, together with any formative experiences you consider to have had an influence on his personality."

Hazō? This was about Hazō? Not about the many things she'd done in order to keep the family fed these past few years? For an instant, Hana sagged as the wave of relief passed through her. Then she jerked back upright.

T&I. Was asking questions. About her son.

"Please, what is this about? Did something happen to him?" The words came out before Hana realised that here and now there was no hope of getting an answer.

"You will not ask questions except for the purpose of clarification. Depending on your degree of cooperation, certain information may be provided at the end of this interview. Now, you will describe Kurosawa Hazō's character in as much detail as you are able."

She obeyed. There was no danger there. Hazō's few acts of "insubordination" were already on record, and, in every way that mattered, he was a good boy. Hana was not afraid to tell the interrogator as much.

A scratch, as if drawing a line under the topic.

"You will list any instances of interaction between Kurosawa Hazō and the following individuals: Gorō Dan, commonly known by the alias of 'Shikigami', Inoue Mari, Kanna Michiko, Ozawa Shintarō…"

A chill went down Hana's spine. She didn't know everyone who'd gone on Hazō's mission, but every name the interrogator mentioned was on that list.

Inoue Mari's name leapt out at her in particular. Hazō had complained about her any number of times, and about how she constantly teased him and ruffled his hair during her visits to see Hazō's team leader. It didn't sound like dangerous information, but if any of those people had committed crimes, and Hazō was being suspected as an accomplice…

Would mentioning Inoue get Hazō in trouble? Or did ANBU already know? What if this was a test of her reliability as a source of information? The Department of Interrogation only had one sister branch.

She couldn't think, not with the light in her eyes, not with her heart beating in her ears, and not with that horrible, sinister hand as the only thing she could see. All she could do was try to get this over with as soon as possible. Hazō was innocent. If ANBU wanted truth, that was what they would learn. If they didn't, then nothing she could say would help.

Tap. A slow scratch, laden with meaning she could not begin to imagine. Tap. Tap.

More questions. Academic history. Special skills. Things they had to know already. Hazō's private descriptions of his missions. His memories of his father. A series of regular verbal blows, like a blacksmith shaping metal, until all Hana could do was answer as if by rote.

Then, finally, release. Seconds, or minutes, or hours, passing in a silence in which even the formerly hash glare of the light no longer registered to Hana's senses.

"Your son abandoned his mission alongside a number of other shinobi. He has been declared a missing-nin, with all the consequences thereof. He will be found, and if he chooses to resist arrest, he will be summarily executed."

The words took a second to reach Hana's consciousness. Then it took all her remaining will not to leap out of the chair – an act that would probably have got her killed instantly.

"You will be aware that when a missing-nin is returned to Hidden Mist, they are brought to stand trial. The standard sentence for treason is public execution, one to five of the Circles of the Bloody Mist depending on the severity of the crime."

Hana was left alone with that thought for some unknown period of time, as the presence across the desk retreated from her conscious awareness.

"However," – Hana flinched – "a small proportion of missing-nin receive the Mizukage's pardon, should it be judged that their abandonment of Hidden Mist was forced by circumstances beyond their control. The odds increase for those capable of atoning through great contribution to the village, such as Bloodline Limit holders.

"Should Kurosawa Hazō contact you, you will report this to the duty officer at the ANBU Central Office immediately. You will also make every effort to persuade him to return to Hidden Mist voluntarily. You will understand that this is his only chance of survival.

"You will now be escorted to your home. You will keep the contents of this interview confidential. Should you fail to follow any of these instructions, you will be designated uncooperative."

A distant voice, addressing someone else, somewhere else. "You will provide physical assistance to Kurosawa Hana so that she may rise from her seat and leave this office."

-o-

Now…

Kurohige's Bar was nearly as old as Mist itself. It dated back to when the man who would become the First Mizukage broke the ninja clans comprising Kurohige Ranmaru's fleet, and gave them the choice between a longer journey to Hidden Mist to swear eternal allegiance, and a shorter journey to the bottom of the ocean. In a characteristic act of pragmatism, the First Mizukage took a crippled Kurohige on as Naval Warfare Advisor, and used his knowledge to dominate the pirates then controlling significant portions of the Water Country.

Kurohige coincidentally retired shortly before the Second Mizukage's inauguration, and ended up opening a bar for a very specific clientele. Now, many decades and descendants later, Kurohige's remained the go-to place for jōnin who had seen too much, or lost too many, and wanted nothing more than a few hours away from the loud naivety of the young and the intolerable pity of the not yet old.

"It was disgusting, Shion. He could have had that swamp wrapped around his little finger with one technique, and instead he just stood back and looked to see if anyone was trying to flee. And us? It was a nightmare. Michizane was taking point. One second, empty patch of mud. The next, he steps down and spikes two feet long shoot up through his leg. He screams, falls into the water – snap! Nothing left. We never even saw the gator leave afterwards.

"And that was just the first trap. Iga spots this explosive shrapnel ball along the path, so naturally he takes the safe way round. There's a bush in the way. He walks past it, bam! It shoots out these pseudopod thingies, and before you know it, they've turned bright red and he's paler than Tsukamoto trying to settle his tab at the end of the month. I don't need to tell you what that meant.

"And you know, I'm like ninety percent sure the Toad Sage had a Hyūga with him. Don't tell me he couldn't have spotted any of that.

"Anyway, wouldn't have helped us much with the fighting, once what was left of us got to their hideout. Shikigami was as bad as the rumours say. Water clones everywhere, and it turns out those famous paper arts of his are cheap enough that even a clone can do them. And when Captain Zabuza finally pinned down the original? Bastard brought down half the cave on top of him. And guess who had to keep Shikigami and that Kanna woman busy while the captain dug himself out? It was like a taste of my own personal hell. We lost most of the chūnin just during that minute. It was… pathetic, and pointless.

"I tell you this, Shion. if I get assigned to hunt missing-nin again, I'd rather just slash my own foot open and get sent to the hospital. I don't want to… shit, Shion, I just don't want to… ever again…"

The words shocked Hana, at the next table over, out of her stupor.

"Did you say 'missing-nin'?"

The jōnin looked up from her drink. "Oh. Oh, shit, Hana, I didn't even think…"

"Was he there?" Hana's expression, and the edge in her voice, sobered the other jōnin up immediately.

The woman seemed to struggle with herself for a few seconds. "Yeah. Yeah, that was your son's group. Shikigami wouldn't tell us anything, no matter what Captain Zabuza did, but not everyone was so tough. They said he's missing, presumed dead, from before we got to them. I'm so sorry, Hana."


	12. Chapter 11: The Iron Escorts

"Not bad," Inoue said. "Your initial plan sucked, but after I gave you that infodump you really turned it around and came up with something good. Okay, let's get started."

Hazou, Wakahisa, and Mori all exchanged surprised looks. That was a much more positive response than they'd expected.

"What? You were expecting a lecture?" Inoue said in amusement. "If you thought I wasn't going to like your plan, why did you propose it?"

"It...was the best we could come up with?" Mori said. "We didn't know enough though, and I saw all these failure modes but I didn't know enough to fix them and if they aren't fixed then the plan won't work and we could all end up dead but we didn't know and I kept looking for answers but-"

"Aaaaand, we're breathing," Inoue said. "We are exhaling stress and panic." She blew out an exaggerated breath. "We are inhaling calm and relaxation." She drew in an equally exaggerated breath. "And, exhaling...and inhaling...good. Now. Yes, you did not have enough information. That's how it's going to be basically all the time in the real world. Having enough time to create a good plan, having enough information to create a good plan...those are schoolroom things. They rarely happen out in the field, so you need to learn to do the best planning you can and then adjust on the fly. That said, let's talk about it.

"Iron is a reasonable place to go," she said. "Obviously, there's nowhere that's good to go when you're a missing-nin...that's kinda the point. If there were, then all the missing-nin would go there, so all the hunter-nin would go there, so it it would be a bad place to go. Anyway, there's no ninja village in Iron, so there's no organized competition. Without an organized ninja presence there will be a lot more demand for our services...especially since they probably don't see many jonin-led heavy combat teams."

She paused, the corner of her mouth twitching in amusement as she waited for the question.

None of the genin wanted to be the one to admit ignorance, but Wakahisa broke first. "Why not, sensei?" he said. "Wouldn't heavy combat teams be more likely to survive whatever they come up against?"

Inoue smiled in satisfaction. "Nope," she said. "Heavy combat teams have the lowest survival rates of any team composition. Scout teams optimize for speed and awareness. They see threats coming and they outrun them. Infiltration teams are optimized first for not being detected and second for escaping. Etc for other team types. Heavy combat teams, on the other hand...well, they're all about the Righteous Face Punching. Find a threat, run up and punch it in the face. Sooner or later, they run up against a threat that can tank the punch and punch back harder, and then the heavy combat team gets wiped. But hey, don't worry-I'm sure you guys will be the ones who beat the odds and survive to your thirteenth birthday!"

All three genin were starting to look a little green.

"Relax," she said. "I'm just screwing with you."

Wakahisa's sigh of relief was audible.

"Well, sorta," Inoue said. "It's true that heavy combat teams have the highest mortality rates, but experience makes a huge difference-it's mostly new genin who get it in the neck, and you guys have a little salt on you. Don't die for another six months and you've got a decent shot at making jonin. The second jump in mortality comes when you're a new-minted jonin, because people get there and, ay, they start thinking that they're all billy badass and, bee, they start getting bigger and badder missions. Anyway, if you survive for another six months your odds of surviving five years are pretty good."

She frowned. "Now, as it happens, I'm pretty motivated to see you guys not get dead too soon, since without you I'd have to cook my own dinner. Best thing I can do on that front is to give you a slightly wider skillset.

"Anyway, yes, Iron is a good choice. Dealing with villagers is also good; it's a way to get you three some infiltration training without too much risk."

She paused, scraping the last of the beans out of her bowl and savoring them. She licked the spoon clean, then set the bowl down with a sigh.

"I'm going to bed," she said. "I'll leave you three to the washing up, and then you'll need to stand watches. In the morning we'll be heading out for Iron. G'night!" She turned and vanished into the shelter she'd built.

The genin exchanged worried looks and then started cleaning up from dinner.

o-o-o-o

Sneaking out of Fire was an interesting experience. When the group had come in they'd had over thirty ninja, most of them fresh genin; there had been no way to completely hide their tracks, so they'd mostly focused on speed. The falconer had kept his bird in the air as a forward scout and one of the jonin had lagged behind to cover their trail as well as possible, but they'd still been making good time.

Inoue, on the other hand, was more interested in stealth and misdirection than speed. They stuck to the treetops wherever they could. When they had to travel on the ground they waterwalked; it didn't prevent them from leaving tracks but it did lower the ground pressure, thereby making the tracks fainter. Inoue would occasionally stop and be completely still and silent for up to ten minutes at a time; the genin were never quite sure what she was searching for or how she was doing it, but they stayed quiet and tried not to distract her.

When she wasn't practicing being a statue, Inoue would give them lessons without warning.

"Ten minutes ago we passed a tree with a patch of white moss on it. How many branches were on the tree below ten feet?"

"How many birds were in that flock? What kind of bird? One of them was missing feathers on its breast-what position was it in the formation?"

"All of you henge. Kurosawa: six-year-old girl from a farm family, dressed for school. Wakahisa, small-town grandmother going to market. Mori: left-handed male carpenter's apprentice. Oh my gods, all of you are awful. Try again. No, still awful. Oh, come on, Kurosawa-girls don't walk like that! Wakahisa, not every grandmother has palsy! Mori...ugh. Don't get me started."

"'Hello, little girl, I see you're going to school. What's your favorite class?' ... Oh my gods, Kurosawa, just because you're a little girl doesn't mean you have to make puppy-dog eyes! Try it again. Really? That's what you're going with? You're supposed to be six! Do you honestly think that would be a six-year-old farm girl's favorite class?!"

The entire experience was nerve-wracking.

Nerve-wracking or not, they reached Iron without meeting anyone and without Inoue actually carrying through on any of her histrionic promises to give up and drown herself because there was no point in training such hopeless students. (Although Hazou noticed that she was just as quick with the praise as with the sarcasm, so none of them ended up actually in tears.)

By the time they crossed the border it was after nightfall, so they slept in the trees. Inoue had rope and a half-dozen nets in one of her storage scrolls; they made very servicable hammocks. Still, they were careful to have someone on watch.

The genin shot for it to see who got first choice of watch schedule; Hazou lost and ended up on second shift. Second was always the worst because you slept for not-enough hours, then woke up and stood watch while struggling to be fully aware, then slept for not-enough hours, then got up and had a full day ahead. He was perched on a branch, pinching himself to stay awake when he heard the sfft, tunk! of a thrown kunai slamming into flesh just above his head. A shower of blood soaked his back; a moment later sixty pounds of beheaded snake that had been lowering itself from above fell on him before sliding off the branch and smacking into the ground below.

"For future reference," Inoue said dryly. "Being on watch means you're supposed to see the threats before they bite you. Good thing I decided not to actually sleep. C'mon, the blood and the carcass will attract scavengers. Give me your shirt and let's get out of here." She vanished his bloody shirt into a storage seal and ninety seconds later the group was awake and on the move.

o-o-o-o

Two days later they'd found a good campsite in the canopy of a giant oak. The tree's roots were moderately mobile, and had choked out all the surrounding trees, leaving a clearing in the immediate area. At the base of the tree was a den of several dozen chakra-enhanced weasels. They were the size of small dogs and their fur could release a blast of raiton energy to stun their prey; nothing else in the area seemed to want to tangle with them, but they weren't able to climb, so the ninja could jump over the clearing in order to safely reach the tree. With the weasels as perimeter defense they were relatively safe, although Inoue still slept lightly.

The first day was taken up getting established, training, and scouting. The morning of the second was more training, and in the afternoon Inoue judged them ready to try out their technique for real.

"Hazou, henge up to early twenties," she said. "You're taking lead-you're Yamada Taro, the jonin leader of this team. I'm Fujihara Hanako, one of your genin. Your goal is to ingratiate us with the villagers and get us a paying job." She glanced to the side and laughed. "Put the jealousy away, Wakahisa. You'll get your turn. You and Mori are each going to take lead on contact with the next couple towns."

Hazou did everything he could to keep his face calm but it must not have worked. Inoue-sensei reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, kid," she said seriously. "Take a breath. You can do this, I promise. It's a tiny village in the middle of bloody nowhere. The stakes are about as low as they get. There's zero threat here; if it doesn't work we can retreat, no harm done. These people might not want to work with a particular ninja, but they sure aren't going to do anything to piss one off...such as, by way of example, ratting him out. They'll know that we could wipe out their pissant little village before breakfast, if we were of a mind. Just sound confident, be respectful, and you'll knock their socks off."

Hazou nodded, swallowed the lump in his throat, and led the way into the cluster of twenty-odd small huts on the shore of the lake.

Half a dozen fishing boats were out on the water, pulling in the catch for the day. It was a nice day and most everyone was outside-hanging wash, mending fishing nets, preparing food, or doing the thousand and one other small tasks that made up the fabric of village life.

With no way of knowing what the social hierarchy was, Hazou just went up to the first person he saw. She was a brown-haired woman, her youth well in the past but old age still up ahead. There was a sewing basket next to her, but she had taken a break to smoke a pipe and pick at some chicken and noodles.

"Excuse me," Hazou said in the deep and most-definitely-a-grownup voice of his henged form. "My team and I are passing through; we're experienced escorts and we thought we would see if anyone needed to travel."

The woman eyed him up and down. "We see very few ninja here, shinobi-san," she said after a moment. "May I ask how long you expect to be in the area?"

Hazou frowned. "I didn't say we were shinobi," he said. "What makes you assume we are?"

The woman looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. "There are four of you, one adult and three younglings. The young ones follow behind you in a group, keeping their eyes turned out. You walk like the walls better get out of your way. You carry pouches at exactly the spot one would reach for a weapon, and those pouches are full of long heavy things that are probably kunai. Finally, there are only four of you and you just walked out of the forest."

"Ah," Hazou said. "Yes. Well, you are correct, ma'am. I am Yamada Taro, jonin leader of this team. We have meat and steelback bristles for trade, and would be interested in paying work if there's any to be had."

"Mm-hm," the old woman said. "I see. Well, I'm Tanaka Mariko. Could I see your meat, please?" Yellow teeth flashed as her face split in a wide grin. "Oh, it's been years since I said that to a handsome young man!" She cackled and tipped him a wink.

Flustered, Hazou pulled out the storage scroll and unsealed it, removing a few of the steaks they'd cut from the steelback.

"Top quality, as you can see," he said, fighting down a blush.

"Hmmmm...not bad," she said. "Not bad. I would trade you one of the steaks for information, so long as you promise not to hurt me if you don't like the information."

"What sort of information?" Hazou said guardedly.

She snorted. "Now, shinobi-san, if I told you the information then I couldn't trade it, could I? Suffice to say, it's something that will help you in future trading. I'll also point you to some good-paying work."

Hazou rubbed his chin. It seemed harmless enough; it wasn't like one steak was much compared to the amount they had, and it was easy enough to get more. "All right," he said. "One steak, and I agree not to hurt you. Now, what's this information?"

Mariko selected the steak and set it aside, wrapping it in a rag from her sewing basket.

"First of all," she said. "Most people know that ninja can henge, and we know that any ninja who turns up in a podunk town like ours is likely to be a missing-nin, so we're always going to be looking close, trying to tell if he's going to kill us all. Shinobi-san, you walk like a dangerous man, but you act like a teenager-you blush at a raunchy old woman's joke, and you hesitate when you bargain. My suspicion is that you're another genin-" She saw his expression of dismay and raised her hands placatingly. "Not that it matters," she said. "No villager in the world is going to care who or what you are as long as you actually have ninja skills and you're willing to deal instead of rob. We don't have much, but we're happy to do business with any ninja who comes through. Kami knows, there's always plenty of work for shinobi."

Hazou was blushing furiously; to conceal it he wrapped an illusion-henge around his physical henge, making his face seem calm and undisturbed.

"Thank you for your instruction, Oneesan," he said with a deep bow. "May I ask what sort of work you have?"

She rubbed her chin and took another draw on her pipe. "Well, there's some waterbugs that have been causing problems for the fisherman-they got Genzo-chan last week. We'd pay to get rid of those. Our potter needs more clay; there's a good deposit of it not too far from here, but it's a three-hour trip by six men when you need to guard yourself in the forest. With you lot as guards, it probably wouldn't take more than twenty minutes to get there, and they'd be able to bring back a lot more clay if you're willing to carry, or if you've got some of those magic scrolls.

"Let's see, what else? Food's always a big one. We'd pay for anything you wanted to hunt up. We'd pay more if it was one of the dangerous things. We'd like better defenses around the town; I know a lot of you type have jutsu that let you move dirt around, make walls, that sort of thing. The whole town would pay for that. If we had the defenses we could expand the fields a bit; we'd need to bring in more water to irrigate, though. If you're willing to take people through the forest we could organize a trade trip down to Yuni. Do you have any of those magic scrolls? If we could use those we could take a lot trade goods along, make more money for everyone."


	13. Chapter 12: Settling In

(Note: This chapter was originally published in three parts. That's why the FFnet linebreaks are here, alongside the authors original "-o-"s. Also, if you want to read the full story up to current and have some input on what Hazo does, search "sufficient velocity marked for death" and click the first link. Be sure to use the threadmarks or click "reader mode")

* * *

"I think I may have spotted a flaw in my cunning plan," Inoue-sensei commented as she examined the package delivered by the villagers as a reward for the clay-obtaining mission. The grateful villagers had rewarded the group with exactly four sets of fresh clothes – ones which perfectly fit Hazō, Wakahisa, Mori, and Inoue-sensei's teenage girl disguise.

"Normally I'd always have a cache with a change of clothes around when infiltrating as a kid," Inoue-sensei lamented. "Though I'd rather not infiltrate as a kid at all. In the long term, it's way more of a pain than acting as an adult woman – or man – and then you'd better hope it's not a seduction mission. There aren't enough baths in the world to feel clean after one of those."

The three genin shuddered, and did their best not to think about this.

"But forget that!" Inoue-sensei flicked her hands in the air as if shooing away an unpleasant thought. "I've been every kind of seamstress on my missions. Get me some extra cloth and I'm sure I can figure something out. In the meantime, you guys are going to cheer me up by impressing me with the vast amount of information you doubtless acquired while I was busy."

-o-

"Ninja?" The fishmonger asked with a wry smile as he carved up another piece of disturbingly purple meat. "We don't really see no ninja from one year to the next, and it's rarer than that for them to actually help out like you're doing, Heavens bless. 'course, what we do see from time to time is travellers coming in on their own from the wilderness without a scratch on 'em, all mysterious-like, and turning up their noses at everything they see. So, y'know, never hurts to be polite when someone is passing through. Now, since you're here 'n all, how about some bilecarp? Freshest catch, and I'll even give you an extra measure since you helped out my cousin."

Hazō studied the… thing in front of him. Its dead eye gazed balefully at him, as if to say "your stomach versus my flesh, one round, winner takes all."

"Th-Thank you, sir. Maybe another time."

-o-

"That's mighty kind of you, lass, but we don't need no opti-sation round here. We use good old-fashioned cow dung instead. Plough the soil, plant the seeds, season later we harvest. Gotta rotate what stuff you plant on each field each year, else the soil will go bad. Hard work the lot of it, even for a good iron-arm like meself, but we get paid back in full once reaping season rolls round. You stick around 'til then, you'll see it all. The stuffy old chief starts speechifying about how we've made it through another year, and giving thanks to the forefathers, and then right before everyone falls asleep, he finally shuts up and we get on with the music, and the dancing, and a great many fun things that you're too young to hear about."

-o-

"Currency? Ha. You're daft if you think anyone'll take Iron ryō, boy. No, we use hard Leaf ryō 'round here. National pride's for the soft men down south, not for honest folk as has to eke out a living however they can.

"Not that we see much trade in a little village like this, y'understand, roads being what they are. But once a year or so, the Baikan Caravan rolls by and we sell some pots, hides, dragonfly stings or deep biter scales or what have you, and buy ore and coal, maybe a few luxuries. If we're lucky, maybe another caravan will turn up later, but only a fishbrain counts on luck.

"Anyway, easier to do trade in kind out here: a stack of ryō ain't much good to you when the snows pile high, but a good trading fur, on the other hand... You bear that in mind if you want to go trading with those snooty Rachiganians up north, or the drunkards in Mina over past the hills to the east.

"The wildlife? Oh, it's not so bad. We're one of the safer regions. The drop-bunnies are no threat, they just burrow themselves into the earth soon as they smell a threat. Now the big dragonflies, they're more serious. You breathe in that green powder they shed, all your muscles seize up, and then they carry bits of you off into the treetops just like that. So if you don't want to end up with a bunch of eggs laid in you, you hold your breath and you run when you hear the buzzing.

"Oh, and then there's the black hunter in the woods, but no one rightly knows what that thing is. You go into the woods, you be careful, and you watch for the eyes glinting in the shadows. And of course there are the waterbugs what got poor Genzō. I told him not to go fishing on the northern side, I told him, but would he listen? When the lake water glints, the wise fisherman sprints. _Children_ know that one.

"Say, boy," the healer's eyes narrowed as she moved onto a different train of thought, "I've got a daughter 'round your age. Lovely blonde hair, eyes you could lose yourself in, all her own teeth… Now I know you're a mite young, but we're practical folk round here. What say I introduce you two?"

Hazō, whose dating experience consisted of some combination of zero, zip, zilch and naught, was at a loss for words. Fortunately, Wakahisa was quick to come to the rescue in his own inimitable fashion.

"Oh, don't worry about him, ma'am. He's not into _girls_ that way."

The healer gave Hazō a funny look. Keeping his face perfectly straight, Hazō flashed some brief hand signs under the table to Wakahisa. _You. Certain death. Imminent.  
_  
Fortunately, karmic justice was restored instantly. "Oh, dearie me. Well, I suppose you'll do just as well, redhead." The woman raised her voice. "Ayako, will you come over here?"

Mori's appalled face flashed across Wakahisa's mind.

"I'm sorry my mission told me I have to sharpen my instructor before the next kunai I have to go now!"

Wakahisa fled. Hazō stammered something incoherent and followed at maximum ninja speed.

-o-

Granny Yoshino fixed her good eye on the three visitors, and took another long draw from her pipe.

"Ah, you'll be the children everyone's been making such a fuss about. But I have no requests for you. No, I'm quite happy as I am, thank you," she said, letting loose an unhealthy-sounding rattling cough.

"We were told that you were, um, the village's best storyteller," Hazō said. "We were hoping to hear about the history of the Country of Iron."

Granny Yoshino raised her eyebrows. "Well, now. Curiosity's a fine thing in the young. Take a seat – mind the cat – and I will tell you the story as it was told to me by my mother, and to her by her mother, and to her by Old Man Kanda who always thought he knew everything."

Her voice took on a melodic, ritualised quality, ruined only by the occasional cough.

"The Land of Iron is harsh, but fair. To those who do nothing, she gives nothing, but to those who bend their backs in worship, she once gave all the riches of the earth.

"In time, those riches attracted the eyes of the cursed shinobi, who cannot see a thing without desiring it, and cannot desire a thing without at once taking it by force. For countless generations, we lived under their thrall, our daimyo nothing but a helpless puppet, all that was best in our land sent to the clans of the south as tribute to line their pockets.

"But one day _he_ was born. Ashikage no Yōtarō, the Liberator. The Liberator was blessed by the Heavens with more of the magic called chakra than a dozen of the cursed shinobi, and he had a vision. Hidden away in the wastelands of the north, he devised a sword art that drew its strength from any man's chakra, be it as mighty as a storm or as feeble as a falling teardrop, so that no longer would all power be held by a few oppressors while the greater part of mankind suffered beneath their yoke.

"When the time was right, he came to seek disciples within each of the great cities. He told them that the way of the cursed shinobi was the way of spies, thieves and assassins, and preached of another way, a way for men of honour to serve their land. He taught all who wished it the art of the samurai, the honoured servant that carries out the will of the people. And when the cursed shinobi came to collect their due once more, the samurai cut them down like the dogs they were, and set their heads upon spears outside the great city of Konoma.

"But the armies of freedom were not ready. When next the cursed shinobi came, they came in force, an alliance of clans such as could not have been imagined in those early days. They slew the Liberator and hunted down every last one of his disciples. They burned all of the great cities to the ground to ensure that no trace of rebellion survived, and they placed cruel overseers so that we would never think to rise again.

"Now the Land of Iron is a shadow of what it once was. The cursed shinobi pillaged the land until there was nothing left, then left her for dead. But we know that the iron of our land is not only within the earth, but also within each of our hearts, and we await the prophesised time when the Liberator shall return to turn that iron into a warrior's steel."

Wakahisa said the first thing on his mind. "Aren't you afraid that the ninja will punish you for talking about them like that?"

Hazō tried to kick him in the ankle as subtly as possible. But Granny Yoshino didn't seem to think there was anything odd about the question.

"What could they take from us that they haven't taken already?" she said bitterly. "What have they got to fear now they've slain our warriors and broken our weapons? The only shinobi with any interest in us anymore are the missing-nin, and they are the enemy of our enemy."

She gave Hazō and the others a meaningful look, but said nothing more.

* * *

"Kami above and demons below, will you three stop wittering at me?!" Inoue asked, throwing her hands in the air. "Yes, yes, questions! Gah! Use your own common sense sometimes! Civilians don't know crap about jutsu beyond the most basic, so no matter what you throw they aren't going to recognize it. You don't want to throw them around just to show off, because doing so leaks information about your capabilities, but using them for a valid purpose is fine. If you take the attitude 'I must never use jutsu for fear of outing myself' then you're just crippling yourself. If you have that attitude it will make you hesitate when you actually need to use them, and increases your odds of ending up dead."

"But sensei, what if other ninja come along and question-" Mori started.

"Yes, and what if my hair was made of green spinach?" Inoue snapped. She took a deep breath and visibly made herself calm down. "Look, Mori, I get it: you're nervous because you're not used to being missing-nin. That's sensible, but you can take it too far. There's really very little difference between being a missing-nin and being on a long-term assignment in enemy territory: there are enemy ninja who want to kill you and your information is available in the bingo books. As a missing-nin some of those enemy ninja are from your own village, but that doesn't really change the overall situation. Don't use jutsu gratuitously, but use whatever you need to use when it makes sense to use it. The one exception is that once you start to acquire a reputation you want to think about how you use your signature moves. For example, if you come across the aftermath of a ninja battle and there are some giant-toad footprints, most likely Jiraiya-san was involved. That can be a thing you want to use sometimes, as a psychological weapon. On the other hand, sometimes you want to keep those moves hidden so as to conceal who you are. It's relative."

"But what about our bloodlines? Those are distinctive, and-"

"Yes, okay, fine," Inoue said. "That's true. But it's not as bad as it seems. Mori, your bloodline isn't visible-it just looks like you have common sense. Kurosawa, yours isn't visible either-it just looks like you have an especially good kinesthetic sense. Wakahisa, your barrel is unusual but it really just looks like an oversized canteen. Don't try impressing the girls with your stretchy whip-or with your Water Whip jutsu-and you'll be fine."

"Thank you, sensei," Hazou said. "May I ask just one more question and then I'll let it go?"

Inoue sighed. "Yes, fine. What is it?"

"Well, you said that you wanted us to use common sense. Isn't it sensible to check with our sensei as to whether what we think is correct actu-"

"Arggggghh!" Inoue said, flicking the contents of her soup mug at him.

Hazou quickly kawarimied out of the way and vanished, laughing, into the village.

o-o-o-o-o

"Look, there's a lake _right there_ ," Wakahisa said dismissively. "How hard could it be to dig a ditch with a gate?"

The villagers looked at each other. The look was complicated; the basis of it was a look that all three genin were uncomfortably familiar with from their time at the Academy: 'oh look, a genin who thinks he knows something, how cute, what an idiot'. The other was more along the lines of 'so…who wants to bell the cat?'

Finally one of the oldsters spoke up. "You are entirely correct about that, ninja-san," he said, bowing deeply. "Digging the ditch and putting a gate on it is very easy; you are most wise. We would be very grateful for any insights you might offer on the design of the gate, however. I'm afraid that multiple generations of this village have failed to come up with a design that will admit water but keep out the poisonous jumping spinefish, the water bugs, the stingweed, or several other denizens of the lake. There is also one other small matter—insignificant for a ninja, I feel certain, but somewhat challenging for mere civilians: the land slopes up quite steeply from the lake shore, making it difficult to bring the water up. Until now we have diverted water from the river on the edge of the forest, but perhaps there is a better solution that will use the water in the lake. Could you please enlighten us?"

"Oh," said Wakahisa, blushing.

"I could have told you that," Mori muttered quietly.

o-o-o-o-o

"We don't typically use barrels here, I'm afraid," the potter said apologetically. He was in the middle of spinning clay on a treadle-operated wheel. He paused to dip water onto his hands in order to keep the clay moist. "There is a great deal of clay, but gathering substantial amounts of wood is dangerous for us."

"Oh," said Wakahisa, blushing.

"Okay, I didn't see that one," Mori muttered quietly.

o-o-o-o-o

"Nice workmanship," Inoue said, studying the spearheads. "You do good work, Fukio-san." She still wore her genin disguise and was careful not to sound too authoritative.

The smith bowed. "Thank you, ninja-san," he said politely. An observer might have thought it odd how respectful the forty-something professional was to a twelve-year-old girl. Granted, it would have required the theoretical observer to have grown up under a rock and somehow never heard the word 'ninja', but it was theoretically possible.

Inoue vanished the last of the dozen spearheads into her sealing scroll—the one scroll that she had allowed the villagers to see. "Yamada-san has decided we're going to hunt out the local wildlife in the forest," she said. "He said"—her voice dropped into the best approximation of Hazou's henged-up adult voice that a twelve-year-old girl could manage—"'It will make things safer for the village, put a lot of meat in the pot, give us some trade goods, and give you three idiots some combat experience.'" She flashed him an urchin grin and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Yamada-san has been dodging having a team assigned ever since he became a jonin. He was most upset when our leader finally insisted."

The smith laughed. "When I was an apprentice, my master used to talk the same way to me, ninja-san," he said. "I would like to believe that he would be proud of my skill today, and I have no doubts that Yamada-san will be just as proud of you."

"Thank you, Fukio-san," Inoue said with a bow. "What can you tell us about the local area? Is there anything in particular you'd like us to look for? Anything we shouldn't bother bringing in, or should definitely bring in?"

"Ah, well," said the smith, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "There's the waterbugs, of course, but those are in the lake and you already know about them. In the forest you've got the voles—they can tunnel through the ground almost as fast as I can walk, and they like to leap out at their prey, or collapse the ground under you to bring you down to them. One of them isn't too dangerous; they'll give you a nasty bite, but that's it. Unfortunately, they travel in packs. If you could make a point of cleaning them out it would be much appreciated. Then there's the mindbirds; they have some sort of genjutsu ability that will leave a man standing, staring and stupid, while they eat his eyes. Then there's the dire rabbits—careful with those ones, they've got a mean streak a mile wild and have a raiton power that lets them become lightning for a moment—and the hedgehogs with the toxic spikes. Don't worry about those too much; the spikes only have a range of ten or twenty feet, and the 'hogs move slow. Oh, and of course there's the wolves."

Inoue raised her eyebrows. "And what is their horrible power?" she asked.

The smith shrugged. "Nothing, they're just wolves. Not _everything_ has horrible chakra powers, ninja-san."

Inoue chuckled. "You caught me, Fukio-san," she said. "Anything else?"

"Well, there's the black hunter," Fukio said. "No one knows what it is; sometimes people have seen a flicker of movement in the woods, but that's it. Those that turns around and run the other way usually make it out alive as long as they drop whatever they're carrying. Those that do anything else generally don't come back."

"Ah," Inoue said. "Well, that sounds like fun. Thank you, Fukio-san, I very much appreciate the briefing."

"You are most welcome, ninja-san," he said. "Please; whatever you want from my stock, take it. I cannot describe how grateful we are to your team; if there is anything I can make for you, I would be happy to."

Inoue bowed. "You are most generous, smith-san," she said. "I will talk with my team." She gave him a final smile before departing.

o-o-o-o-o

Wakahisa walked carefully around the edge of the lake, stepping carefully across the still surface of the water. Blood leaked from the soles of his feet, drifting into the the lake in curls. The water erupted in a flash of light that turned the surface of the lake into a circle of dazzling rainbows for yard around. The patterns shifted and shimmered beneath him; he ignored it, continuing to pace forward across the surface, until the giant insect rose up behind him and pounced on his back, chelicerae scissoring closed in a powerful bite that snipped his head neatly off.

At which point Wakahisa collapsed in a puddle of water, leaving a very surprised lake monster tumbling down.

It hadn't even reached the surface when a storm of ninja-wired weaponry and a lash of water came flying from a clump of reeds on the shore and utterly obliterated the creature.

"Mine!" crowed Wakahisa.

"My kunai arrived first," Mori said, calmly pulling in the ninja-wire to retrieve her kunai. "Therefore, credit for this kill is mine."

"No way!" Wakahisa said. "I totally smashed it! Your kunai just stabbed it a little. And anyway, I hit first."

"Sensei?" Hazou asked.

"Decision to Wakahisa," Inoue said with a smile. "The kunai hit first and probably would have done it, but the water whip was there only a fraction of a second later. It landed before the creature would have died and made absolutely certain."

"Yes!" Wakahisa shouted, pumping his arm...only to stop with an abashed look as Mori glared at him and then stalked off around the lake, kunai in hand and a murderous glint in her eye.

Inoue chuckled. "You're losing three to two, and I think she's going to be a little more certain with the next one," she said. "You'll need to step up your game, kid."

Hazou looked at the sun and sighed. As a close-combat specialist, hunting the lake monsters was remarkably boring for him. Ah well, at least he could tease Wakahisa.

"Don't worry, Wakahisa-kun," he said with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. "At least your drain lets you spot them for us. Well, sort of. I mean, when you aren't just noticing large patches of kelp. I'm sure that was only a one-time thing, though. I mean, it's a little unusual to be having performance issues at your age, but I'm sure it's not a hint of future trouble."

"Piss off," Wakahisa grumbled, setting off after Mori.

o-o-o-o-o

"Problem solved, folks," Wakahisa said, dumping the half-dozen water bug shells in a pile. "We killed a lot more than this, but most of them the water was too deep for us to get the shell back." He puffed out his chest and gestured to himself with one thumb. "No match for a ninja, after all!"

"Thank you, ninja-san," Mariko said, bowing. "This is tremendously helpful. I've made some prawns and noodles with fish eggs; may I offer you some?"

o-o-o-o-o

Hazou was on point with kunai in each hand; Wakahisa took slack with his water whip already deployed. Mori was third, in the most protected position, and Inoue rode drag. Their sensei looked altogether too amused for Hazou's comfort; the genin's hair had been on metaphoric end for the past ten minutes as he stretched his every sense, looking for the slightest threat before advancing one more cautious step into the forest. He eased around a tree, glancing up to make sure there was no horrible eyeball-eating monster in the branches, and screamed shrilly when the ground collapsed under him, dropping him up to his thighs in the earth. Before he could react, chisel-like teeth were ripping chunks out of his calves and thighs.

Chakra surged into his legs, propelling him on a gibbering four-meter leap straight up. One of the voles was latched on hard enough that it came with him, but it was dead by the time Hazou landed, having been stabbed in the head nine or ten panic-filled times.

The voles came boiling up out of the earth, chittering and squeaking in fury at being deprived of their meal. A furious (and, frankly, still recovering from being terrified) Hazou danced through the middle of their ranks, kunai flashing with Iron Nerve precision. From behind him came a hail of kunai and senbon from Mori and a cracking Water Whip from Wakahisa. The voles were dead in seconds.

"Agh!" Hazou said, kicking one of the corpses so hard it bounced off a tree twenty feet away. "Damnit!"

"Let me see," Inoue said, moving forward. She cut the legs of his trousers open with two precise flicks of a kunai so that she could see the wounds.

She studied them for a moment with a grim expression, then looked him dead in the eye. "Hazou...I'm sorry. I'm afraid you're going to die."

Hazou went pale. Behind him, Mori and Wakahisa caught their breath.

"D-die?" he said, cursing himself for the way his voices caught on the word.

Inoue nodded. "Yep." She paused. "It's going to be slow, too...probably somewhere between ten and fifty years. Depends on how good a ninja you become after you heal from this."

Hazou stared at her, mouth hanging open. "You-! Agh!" He shook both fists threateningly but knew better than to actually try to belt her, the way he would have if one of his teammates had played the same trick.

Inoue laughed. "Don't worry, kid, you'll be fine. Stiff and sore and you're going to have some sexy scars to show the girls, but you'll be fine. It's going to slow you down some, though, so be careful. Oh, and, a tip? Tell the girls that you got the scars defending a young woman you were escorting. Chicks dig scars, but honorable and protective ninja are like catnip." She tipped him a bawdy wink and pulled out a basic medkit.

o-o-o-o-o

Being on point while wounded was miserable according to Hazou, but 'good training' according to Inoue-sensei. Unfortunately, since Inoue-sensei assigned march order, Hazou remained on point despite his wounds. It hurt to walk, it hurt to sit, it hurt to do basically anything. As the day wore on he began to fancy himself something of a connoisseur of the pain and the subtlety of its many shades. There was the constant dull ache with which his body urged him to be more careful in the future. There was the sharp tearing pain that reminded him not to stretch his right leg too far or he'd tear his sutures. There was the mind-blanking shriek of pain when he put any weight on the carefully-bandaged divot in his left heel.

Inoue-sensei had been very clear: yes, she'd seen the attack coming and yes, she had deliberately let him walk into it because she'd judged it unlikely to be fatal. He took the lesson to heart, advancing slowly and carefully. If anything even remotely tweaked his awareness he would stop and survey the surroundings until he knew what it was. The extra care let the team shoot two mindbirds out of the trees before getting close enough for the birds' mind-spell to affect them.

The sun was halfway down the sky, the afternoon shadows getting long, when-

"Get back!" Inoue shouted, flickering forward past the team. "Back to the village, right now!" She vanished into the trees ahead. Before the team could respond there was the echoing _boom!_ of an explosive tag, immediately followed by half a dozen more and then a single cataclysmic blast that shook the ground.

Hazou was opening his mouth to say something-he would never be sure what-when Mori shunshined past him, racing into the trees after her sensei and her idol, both of whom happened to be the same person. Her teammates cursed in sync and went after her.

They caught up to Inoue seconds later. She was standing on the edge of a blast site, absently rubbing her arm where flying splinters had grazed her.

The genin stared in amazement. Dozens of trees-some of them very large-had been knocked down, falling perpendicular to the radius of the crater so that they formed a berm around the edges. The crater itself was shallow but wide-perhaps thirty meters across but only a meter deep at the center.

Mori let out a breath of relief to see Inoue unhurt. "Sensei, what happened?"

"Whoever that was just put up a very large 'do not disturb' sign," Inoue murmured. A moment later, she turned to the team with a forbidding frown. "Also, a group of genin ignored their sensei's orders. Apparently because they really enjoy mucking out the village pigpens for the next few days, and being on half rations, bread and water only."

* * *

"I suspected Mori would be the first to figure it out," Inoue-sensei commented in a tone of weary amusement. "No, scratch that. I _knew_ in advance, as an unmistakeable, rock-hard fact, that Mori would be the first to figure it out, which by the way is something you boys should take some time to reflect on."

Hazō and Wakahisa exchanged pained glances. After several seconds' silence, Hazō, conscious of his responsibilities as sort-of team leader (and, more to the point, aware that Wakahisa was a coward), decided to bite the kunai.

"Figure what out, Inoue-sensei?"

"I told you ages ago that my elements were Water, Lightning and Wind, kids. You wouldn't think it's a hard combination to remember – it's got 'storm' written all over it. Which would have been a totally badass nickname, incidentally, but sadly for me, Captain Ayanami got there first. Though, then again, 'Heartbreaker' has it beat for subtlety.

"Anyway," she flicked her hands as if dismissing the train of thought, "given this fact, why in the name of the Mizukage's embarrassing mess of a haircut did you just smile and nod when I told you I knew Earth and Fire techniques?"

Wakahisa finally found his tongue. "But why would you –"

"Because I was afraid that, in defiance of all probability, Shikigami's little insurrection had taught you nothing. When a superior tells you something, you listen, but you engage your brain as well, and you _do the work_ to check if it matches what you already know. Sometimes, they're just testing you. Sometimes, they've got something wrong, and if you don't tell them, you've screwed over your entire team. And sometimes, your superior's sending you on a suicide mission, and if you don't pick up on the little clues in time, there won't be enough left of you to feed the sharks. Kids, I appreciate the trust, really, I do, but you've got to know when to be good little soldiers and when to think for yourselves.

"We're not a genin training team here. We're partners in crime. And if you trust me to be right _all_ of the time, you won't be there to catch me when I fall."


	14. Chapter 13: Science and Caravans

(Hoster's Note: As of the time of this posting to FFnet, one chapter a day will get you caught up to where the story is currently at in approximately four to six months, assuming the authors keep writing at their current pace, which they have been doing for about two years now. If you want to catch up faster, search "sufficient velocity marked for death" and click the first link. Threadmarks are awesome, and Reader Mode is your friend.)

* * *

"Mori, final safety check."

Kei took a long breath. She hadn't gone this deep in a while, not since before Shikigami-sensei killed Sumie-sensei and ended the future she thought she was going to have. In the future-as-planned, she wouldn't have been drawing on her Bloodline Limit like this until she was a lot stronger, both as a ninja and as a Mori. But Inoue-sensei had been emphatic. When experimenting with ninjutsu, there was no level of caution too high.

So she reached down, past the shadows that were the legacy of the Mori Clan's distant progenitors, into the depths of the Frozen Skein. She touched the focus point.

Thoughts, feelings, even the outside world – all was instantly washed away by a pale wave of apathy, its waters freezing into unbreakable ice that numbed all sensation. All that was left was the Mori Voice, the incurable poison in her bloodline's chalice.

Rest. Sleep. Embrace the nothingness within you. Will is struggle. Will is suffering. Step aside from the world, and know peace. Let the gears of fate grind without you. Forsake the agony of choice, the crushing responsibility of action, and find the happiness of pure oblivion.

The litany kept going, endless variations on a theme, the force of sheer repetition increasingly hypnotic, compelling. The Mori Voice was why you never, ever, went this deep without your defences in place.

But Kei's defences were ready. The counter to the Mori Voice was strength of purpose, and her purpose had been given to her by Inoue-sensei herself.

Final safety check. Three words repeated over and over like a mantra, one looping voice cancelling out another.

She drew the ice of apathy further up her body, past the frozen heart and into the structure of her mind. Final safety check. The words were a mould, reshaping the ice as it passed through them. Finally, the ice arrived inside her eyes, twin razor-sharp shards serving as lenses of dispassionate, merciless clarity.

Once those three seconds were over, Kei opened her eyes. She slowly scanned the clearing, from right to left.

Safety Rock A, out at the very edge.

The boar bristles in the centre, placed in a small pool of water. Wakahisa next to them. Safety Rock D next to both.

Kurosawa, on a treetop mirroring her own position on the far side of the clearing. Safety Rock B on the ground, some way past Kurosawa.

Inoue-sensei, lined up in a straight line with Safety Rock A and Wakahisa, hands in Substitution Technique position, medical kit and kunai both on her, within instant reach. Flawless.

Behind Kei herself, Safety Rock C, out near the edge of her range.

All relevant objects were in position, including Kurosawa, Wakahisa and Inoue-sensei. The next step was to draw the overlay of causal webs between them, and simulate their interactions given the various possible failure modes of the experiment. Were there any variables she had not yet taken into account?

Finally, Kei concluded that the precautions taken were an acceptable balance of probability of injury or death versus available time and material resources, and that further optimisation would be impractical.

The task complete, Kei took a few seconds to melt back into her normal self.

"Safety check OK. Wakahisa, you may go ahead."

-o-

"In other words," Hazō summed up, "we've got nothing."

"Hey, I tried, OK?!" Wakahisa reacted. "But I'm not a sensory type. I never said I was. For all I know, those bristles are bursting with top-quality Wakahisa Noburi chakra right now, only a certain genius came up with this experiment without figuring out how to measure the results."

"Come on, kids," Inoue-sensei said in a placating voice that almost managed not to be condescending. "A negative result is still a result. And honestly, part of me is a little relieved nothing happened. I had these visions of Noburi commanding a legion of undead steelbacks, and there's no way that was going to end well for anyone.

"Now the fact that you couldn't sense, never mind drain, the chakra that was already there – that was more of a surprise. Isn't sensing and draining chakra through water a big part of the Wakahisa package?"

Wakahisa squirmed. "The mechanics of how it works are a clan secret. I shouldn't talk about it."

Inoue-sensei fixed him with a long, thoughtful look.

"Noburi, I'm not a clan ninja. My mother was a civilian, and my father was a mystery I never cared to solve. So I realise I don't know what it's like for you. Maybe giving away clan secrets is the ultimate dishonour for you, something that would weigh you down for the rest of your life. And if that's what you tell me, I'll respect it.

"But there is one thing I do know. The three of you, all Bloodline Limit kids, are incredible assets."

She paused briefly.

"I mean you have incredible assets. Jeez, I sounded like one of those soulless pencil-pushers in the Mizukage's Office for a second. Anyway, those Bloodline Limits? They're your ace in the hole, the one thing you have that even jōnin don't, at least unless they're from your clan. And as a group, they're something we have that no other missing-nin do.

"As I say, I'm cool with however you choose to deal with the clan secrets thing. Just be aware that what you tell the rest of us, and what you don't, could make a very real difference to our odds of survival."

To his credit, Wakahisa managed to hold his ground for entire seconds.

"All right. So the thing is, using my Bloodline Limit is like making myself a channel between the chakra in the water outside and the chakra in the water in my supply, with the water in my body as a medium and a filter. Sensing chakra in the water is part of that. So if I can't sense chakra even when it's in the water, then that's probably because I can't channel it for some reason."

"I have a theory," Mori cut in. "The blacksmith thought the chakra in those bristles was probably Earth Element. But the chakra in Wakahisa's canister is completely neutral. Maybe his Bloodline Limit just doesn't work on elemental chakra?"

Inoue-sensei nodded. "Something to think about."

"Hold on!" Wakahisa exclaimed.

"Don't write me off just yet! There was the thing with the water clone!"

Hazō looked at him blankly. "The thing where you tried to drain it and it burst apart and nothing happened?"

"Yes! I mean no! I mean I felt something! If I can't absorb elemental chakra, then I guess that goes for my own elemental chakra as well, but… I got the feeling that maybe, if I was faster or more focused or whatever, I could've held onto the clone's Water chakra long enough to recycle it into some other technique!"

Inoue-sensei shrugged. "That's an experiment for another time, I think. We need to make good use of the next few days for training, before the caravan arrives. And hey, we experimented with Bloodline Limit ninjutsu and no one got killed, maimed or even particularly humiliated. I call that a win!"

-o-

The caravan, when it finally came, was impressive. There were three wagons, pulled by things that might have been cows if they'd had the right number of legs and didn't have greyish-blue carapaces and permanent expressions of thoughtful ennui. There were also, as far as Hazō could see, three guards: a giant of a man with a somewhat clichéd huge club over his shoulder, a young woman with a shortbow on her back, and an older woman with a sword at her hip, in a proper scabbard, no less.

"Yamada, huh? You can call me Baikan, trader at large!" the middle-aged man in the front wagon exclaimed with a sweeping, dramatic hand movement, followed by a self-deprecating chuckle. "My wife Miyu's in the back, sorting out the inventory. What're you interested in, Yamada? A nice heavy coat for the winter? Not that it's ever anything but winter up here, but it's the thought that counts. Or maybe some spices? If you're anything like me, you need all the help you can get making your cooking taste like there was some actual food somewhere in its ancestry. Or maybe you need to impress a lady friend? I've got all sorts, from –"

"Uh, Mr Baikan, sir, where is your caravan going from here?" Hazō interrupted.

"We've got ourselves a neat little route along the coast, lad. We swing through Rice, then spend a little longer than might be strictly necessary in Hot Springs," Baikan gave Hazō a wink, "make our way across Frost – quite the contrast, let me tell you – and then we either press on into Lightning or double back, depending on how trade's going. Why do you ask? You thinking of joining us?"

Hazō gave what he hoped was a noncommittal shrug.

Baikan waved the younger of his female guards over. "What do you reckon, Aya? Does he strike you as the sort of lad who could keep us safe out on the road? Can't have too many hands on deck, not after the ghost moth incident."

Aya studied Hazō's figure and body language carefully. Hazō did his best to stand like someone who could handle himself in a fight, while not being a member of an elite warrior caste individually capable of wiping entire armies off the face of the earth (eventually, anyway).

After a couple of seconds, she shrugged. "Seems all right to me. Long as he keeps his hands to himself, I've got no problem with it."

Baikan gave a satisfied nod.

"There you go. No need to rush into anything, mind. We'll be spending a few days here, trading and resting and whatnot. I should probably look for new investors, too, after what happened to poor Kanda, but given how there's less than a hundred people in this village, I'm not too optimistic."


	15. Chapter 14: Bloodline Revealed!

(Hoster's Note: if you're eager to find out more about our mysterious Black Hunter, search "sufficient velocity marked for death" and click the first link. Threadmarks and Reader Mode are your friends. As of the posting of this chapter to FFnet, the version on SufficientVelocity is at 160 chapters. There's a lot to get caught up on!)

* * *

"Sensei, I need to speak to you privately," Hazou said quietly.

Inoue raised an eyebrow. "Sure," she said sotto voce. She tapped him with the point of the kunai to show that he was, once again, 'dead', then rolled to her feet and gave him a hand up.

"Okay, what did we learn from this?" she said, turning to where Hazou's teammates sat watching.

"Don't kick above the knee," Wakahisa said, grinning. "Or someone might grab your leg and dump you on your head."

Inoue laughed. "Something like that, yes. It's situational. Kicks to the head, the body, and the groin hit hard and can end the fight quickly, but they also leave your leg hanging out there for an opponent. Look at the other person's style; a big man often doesn't have the speed to grab your leg, so high kicks are a good way to get it done. Many guys like that fight by soaking damage until they can get in close to grapple, take you to the ground. That is the absolute last place you want to be against an opponent like that, and if you ever end up there I will be ashamed of you.

"On the other end of the spectrum you get people like me; I don't have a lot of mass, so I can't physically generate as much power as someone like Shikigami or Zabuza. I could make up for that with chakra use, but chakra runs out, so when I designed my fighting style I chose not to go that route. I'm fast; I'll move in close, break something, then move out again. In and out, like a wolf. Against someone like me you want to control the range and keep from hanging anything out where I can catch it. Someone strong, like Hazou, wants to slow me down with kicks to the legs and then move in for a grapple."

She checked to see that all three students were nodding their understanding, then clapped her hands. "Okay, new task: escape and evasion. We'll split into pairs; one person needs to E&E back to camp, the other person has to track them down and capture them. Noburi, you'll be hunting Keiko, I'll be hunting Hazou. Keiko, you have a thirty second headstart; go that direction three hundred paces before you turn for camp. Go!"

Mori took off into the woods like a scalded cat. Noburi counted down thirty seconds, then leaped after her.

"Alone at last," Inoue said. "So, what's on your brain?"

Hazou licked his lips. "There's something you need to know about my bloodline," he said. "It's a clan secret though; I need you to promise to keep it quiet."

"Nope," Inoue said. "I won't go blabbing it around, but I'll use it or share it whenever I think it's advantageous to the team."

Hazou grimaced. "Okay," he said. He took a deep breath. "How much do you know about the Kurosawa bloodline?"

"It gives you an incredible kinesthetic sense, lets you learn physical skills at an accelerated rate," she said. "Why?"

Hazou shook his head. "It's more than that. We have eidetic muscle memory. I have a library in my head of every movement I've ever made, of any muscle in my body. I can replay them at any time. Arms, legs, face, tongue-it doesn't just let me learn taijutsu quickly, it lets me reproduce any expression, any body language, any word that I've ever spoken. If you teach me an accent and I manage to say a word correctly once, I'll get it right every time from then on."

Inoue's eyebrows went up. "That's rather more significant than I knew," she said. "I can think of a lot of things we can use that for."

Hazou nodded. "There's one more thing," he said. "Seals. If I see a seal, I can reproduce the blank perfectly, every time. Here." He held out a sheet of paper with a design on it. "This is a copy of the seal on your storage scroll-the one with the red stamp. I didn't have any chakra ink so it's just the design, but if that had been done with appropriate tools a seal master could turn it into a proper seal in under a minute."

Inoue blinked. "Is this a joke?" she said.

Hazou shook his head. "No. We don't talk about it, but didn't you ever wonder why the Kurosawas have had at least one seal master in every generation?"

"Hadn't really thought about it, to be honest," Inoue said. "Which, in retrospect, was a mistake. That's statistically improbable. Why is this a secret? Why aren't you all rolling in money and living the luxury life?"

"It's...complicated," Hazou said. "Do you know our family motto?"

"'By darkness unmoved," Inoue quoted. "I never quite understood it."

"It means we hold the line," Hazou said. "My family have been ninja of the Mist since the village was founded. Before that, we were hilltop daimyo for as far back as our family records go. We have always been warriors, and we have always believed that it is our duty to stand at the edge of civilization's light and keep out the darkness that threatens it. We didn't want that taken away from us when we joined Mist. If we made it known that we could produce dozens of seals an hour, the logical thing for the village to do would have been to keep us locked up and guarded, constantly cranking out seals for the use of other people. We would have been taken off the line."

Inoue thought about that. "It could be argued that that would have been a better way to hold the line," she said carefully. "That you would have done more for the fight that way."

Hazou shrugged. "I never said we were logical, just dedicated."

Inoue snorted. "I can get behind that. Okay, so you're saying that if we can find a seal master then the two of you can produce all the tags and scrolls and whatnot that we could possibly want?"

Hazou nodded. "Yes. Or, if I can get the training and the tools, I can make the seals myself. If all this hadn't happened, I would have started my seal training as soon as I made chunin."

"Hm," Inoue said. "Okay, thanks for telling me. I'll keep this quiet, but it definitely factors into our plans." She paused again, staring at the ground and lost in thought, before shaking it away and looking up at Hazou. "Now, as I recall, we were supposed to be doing an E&E drill," she said. "I think you better start running." She grinned evilly and twirled a kunai in her fingers.

Hazou gulped and vanished into the forest.

o-o-o-o

"What did he say, sensei?" Mori asked as Inoue came back from talking to the old fisherman.

"Nothing," Inoue said. She sighed. "It was very frustrating. He's a terrible liar and it was obvious he was hiding something, but I couldn't even get him to talk around the edges of it."

"You could make him talk," Wakahisa said. "You could even use your genjutsu on him so that he didn't remember talking."

Inoue shook her head. "First, genjutsu right in the middle of the village is a little obvious. Second, no reason to go to those extremes when there's an easier way. Get lost, all of you. I have someone else to talk to and I can't do it with you lot hovering. Go talk to the caravan, see if you can get any information about the nearby towns. Try to get a map, too."

"Yes, sensei," the genin chorused before turning and trotting off.

o-o-o-o

Kimiko trotted down to the beach to where Nanami and Akemi were gathering lake plums. The fruit weren't actually plums, but they were small and purple and juicy and the village ate them as often as they could. More importantly, this area of the shore was relatively safe, so gathering fruit here was a safe way for four-year-old girls to contribute.

"Hi, Kimiko!" Akemi called, smiling and waving.

"Hi yourself, Akemi," Kimiko said, smiling and joining the other two in plucking the fruit and setting it in the basket she carried over her arm. "You guys missed it! That ninja girl was talking to old man Kurou. She kept asking questions and he was all"-she screwed up her face in a four-year-old's best imitation of a curmudgeonly scowl-"'grr, don't know nuthin' grr!' She looked so frustrated, I was expecting to see fire shoot out her nose!"

"Don't be silly, Kimiko," Nanami said. "Ninja can't really breathe fire. That's just stories."

Kimiko looked truculent. "Mommy says they can!"

"If they can breathe fire, why did they light their campfire with flint and steel?" Nanami said triumphantly.

"Maybe they just didn't want to waste their magic entertaining you!" Kimiko said, sticking her tongue out.

"What was she asking Kurou about?" Akemi asked, trying to play peacemaker.

"Oh, she wanted to know about the 'black hunter'," Kimiko said, making quotes with her fingers.

Nanami laughed. "I think they met him on their last trip out," she said. "You know, before Yamada and the other two started mucking out the pigpens."

"Yeah, what was up with that, anyway?" Akemi asked. "Why would the grownup be mucking and one of the kids wasn't?"

Kimiko shrugged. "I heard him say that it was 'penance'," she said. "What's penance?"

"It's a ninja thing," Nanami said loftily. "You wouldn't understand."

"You don't know, do you?" Kimiko challenged.

"Do too!" Nanami said.

"Yeah? What does it mean, then?"

"It's like when hunter-san killed the chakra bear that ate Matsuoko and left the body on the edge of the woods," the girl said. "It proves that he can do anything."

The other two girls digested that.

"How does mucking out pigpens prove they can do anything?" Akemi asked doubtfully.

"It...shows that they can master their pride," Nanami said.

"That's dumb," Kimiko said. She paused then glanced up the beach. "Ooh, look, raspberries!"

The three girls hurried up the beach towards the tasty fruit.

o-o-o-o

"They said they're going this way," Hazou said, tracing his finger along the map that he'd bought from the caravan. It wasn't nearly up to the standards of the Mist cartography service, but at least it had all the major and some of the minor towns marked. "Also, I got a briefing on some of the towns in the area." He passed over a sheet of paper with small but neat handwriting across the front.

Inoue skimmed the paper, then glanced at Hazou. "Written briefing, not verbal? We don't have unlimited paper."

"It helps me remember, sensei," Hazou said. "It seemed like important information."

Inoue nodded, understanding the implication. "Okay. You're right, this is good stuff. Noburi, Keiko, what did you get?"

"I spoke to the caravan guards," Keiko said. "I talked with Michi, the older woman. I told her we were caravan guards and offered to trade survival tips with her. We got to talking, and she told me about the others. Aya, the young woman with the bow? She was a ninja candidate over in Lightning, but she washed out in her first semester-didn't have the discipline. Daisuke, the guy with the club, he's from a village in the north of Iron that got wiped out in a ninja battle. He was a teenager when it happened; he didn't have any skills except fighting, so he's been a guard ever since. Michi's been working with Baikan for nine years, but the other two only joined recently-Aya three months ago, Daisuke just under a year ago."

"I managed to get a barrel," Noburi said, holding it up. "And I heard about a place up in the north. There's a bandit leader there who's trying to found a new city and go straight. He's brought in merchants of all kinds-paper makers, tanners, builders. He's got a call out for fighters to serve as a militia, and apparently he's got money to pay. No one knows where he's getting it, but he's paying in gold. Apparently he's got five thousand ninja serving in his army already."

Inoue snorted. "There's a tale that grew in the telling," she said. "There's probably a bandit, and he's probably trying to put a place together, and the rest of it is probably crap. Still, could be an interesting place to look. In the meantime, I found out something interesting about our ninja friend: according to a snotty young lady named Nanami, the so-called black hunter has contact with the villagers other than killing them. Apparently they were having a problem with a chakra bear; he killed it and left the carcass on the edge of the woods for them. They skinned it out and ate it, and then they left three baskets of lake plums where it had been. The plums were gone the next morning, but the baskets were still there, and undisturbed."

"What do you think it means, sensei?" Wakahisa asked.

"That he's not completely a hermit," she said. "That maybe he can actually be approached, if it's done in the right way. Now, I want to give us some options. First, Hazou: draw me three identical pictures of one of those waterbugs. I want to give these people a recognition signal that we can use to communicate. Next, let's talk about plans for the future."


	16. Chapter 15: Poised on the Brink

"That cunning little son of a bitch!" Inoue-sensei gave a wry laugh before passing the note to the three genin.

Hazō studied the "response" that the mysterious missing-nin of the forest had left on the back of their note. The top half was a simple but exact map of the area, with a dozen marks scattered across it. The bottom half was more complicated. Twelve separate lines were filled with very small, neat markings, each line different in style from the others. At the bottom, something was written in common script.

 _One genin only. The rest stay at the village. I will know.  
_  
Hazō thought about it. "If those are the instructions for _who_ is to meet him, then the other part must be where and when. But there are lots of different marks on the map. So presumably, the lines are supposed to tell us which mark to use."

Wakahisa rolled his eyes. "Great, so he's a missing-nin puzzle specialist. Wonderful. Remind me why we want to contact this guy again?"

"It _could_ have been a girl," Mori muttered. "Inoue-sensei did say she didn't get a clear look."

She studied the note for a few seconds longer, aware that Inoue-sensei was watching, and probably expecting her to figure it out before the boys did. There was something familiar about the patterns…

"Inoue-sensei, are these military cyphers?"

"Very good," Inoue-sensei nodded. "I only recognise the fourth one, though. It's a retired Mist cypher, meaning it's not in use anymore because someone outside Mist managed to crack it. It says _dawn tomorrow, Location D._ And I'd bet my portable torture kit the other lines are retired cyphers from other villages. When we go to meet him tomorrow, we'll automatically be telling him which village we're from."

"Uh, Inoue-sensei, why do you have a portable torture kit?" Wakahisa nervously asked.

"Rule One of infiltration: have as much information as possible before going in," Inoue-sensei explained matter-of-factly. "Take note of that one, it's one of the most important rules of being a ninja full stop."

Hazō frowned. "But by showing us he knows all these cyphers, isn't he giving away the fact that he's an ex-codebreaker? If he thinks we might be enemies, it's weird for him to reveal his abilities."

"Wow, you guys are all sorts of on the ball today," Inoue-sensei beamed. "But in this case, it's a good trade for him. We already know he's into seals, and it's standard practice for sealcrafting students to be assigned to the Cryptology Department when they're not training. The required personality traits and skillsets overlap more than you'd expect, and it means they're useful even before they can be trusted with mass seal production.

"So he's trading away a small amount of information about him for a large amount of information about us. And that's not all. Take a look at the points he's put on the map."

This time, it took longer for anyone to work it out. Needless to say, Wakahisa never stood a chance against him, but on this occasion, Hazō even beat Mori to the solution. Her rueful expression only made him feel better.

"Those areas have two things in common – they're within sight of the forest, and they're places the villagers told us in no uncertain terms not to go near if we didn't want to get eaten. So whoever goes there has high odds of getting attacked by something. Then the missing-nin can watch from safety and take notes, and at the end he can come in and have free choice of which side to finish off."

"That's right!" Inoue-sensei smiled happily, as if Hazō hadn't just explained that one of their team would have to be put in mortal danger before they even met their target. "If I were him, I'd personally make sure that the other person had an unexpected encounter with something bitey, because it's really hard to keep up a disguise _and_ only fight at genin level when there's something trying to eat your face. In other words, while the sensible thing to do normally would be for me to go in disguised as one of you – I'm thinking Keiko, for cuteness value – our friend has neatly ruled that option out.

"So, which one of you is volunteering to go into hostile territory without backup and negotiate with an antisocial chūnin-or-higher mad bomber? Don't raise your hands all at once, now."

-o-

"Hey, Mr Ninja, where do you come from? Is it cold like it is here? Is it full of trees? Are there giant fish? Are you married? Can you do ninja magic? Would you like some berries? Is that lady your girlfriend? Are any of the ninja villages bigger than our village?"

Hazō had been through a thousand D-rank babysitting missions, and hated each more than the last.

In fairness, this one was probably more like C-rank. After all, there _were_ dangerous creatures to be found out here, though probably not enough to justify the villagers hiring all four of them just to look after a few girls. And anyway, who sent a bunch of little girls to forage for fruit and berries such a long way away from the village, and in the evening at that? Were they _trying_ to get their offspring eaten by dire wolverines?

Then again, they wouldn't have paid for four ninja's worth of protection if that was their objective. No, this mission just didn't make sense. Even the timing was awkward, coming right as a new group of wanderers came into the village, likely full of useful new information that would help Hazō and the others decide what to do next – only now they might not get a chance to talk to them before the group moved on in the morning.

And the girls never shut up. Not for a second. Nanami was an insufferable know-it-all, Mina took offence at every little thing, and Kimiko was paranoid about ghosts or doppelgangers or something. The rest were even worse. He and Mori, also an only child, swapped many a commiserating glance as the girls verbally and physically tugged them to and fro. Wakahisa, meanwhile, seemed to be entirely in his element, joking and telling stories and successfully using his charm on those too young to see through it. And Inoue-sensei…

Her fingers flickered as she reached over to fix Nanami's sandal, showing the oldest and most commonly used ninja hand sign. _Something is wrong._

More followed. _I. Distraction. You. Settlement. Investigate.  
_  
Then she raised her voice. "Say, girls, can you keep a secret?"

Hazō slipped away as the children instantly converged around Inoue-sensei.

-o-

Something _was_ wrong. Nearly all the lights in the village were out, except those in the village hall – and outside the building, several burly men stood with torches, their expressions vaguely anxious.

After a couple of close calls, Hazō managed to make his way to a window outside the guards' sight range. They seemed on edge, which made them more alert, but on the other hand it hadn't occurred to them to actually _patrol_ the site they were guarding. _Civilians_.

The village hall was full to bursting. Practically everyone in the village was there, minus the children and the men stationed outside. At its heart, being listened to with rapt fascination, were the four wanderers who'd come in earlier that day.

Just as Hazō leaned in to listen, Granny Yoshino's voice snapped out like a whip.

" _Anyone_ can make a claim like that. You think you're the first group of troublemakers I've seen in my life, gnawing on the bones of the past like a pack of splinterclaws?"

One of the men waved his hands placatingly. "You can't deny the timing, ma'am. It's been exactly one hundred years."

The crowd murmured.

"Ninety-eight by the Old Calendar," Granny Yoshino shot back. "That is, the calendar the Liberator _himself_ would have used."

"Well, these things are never precise, are they?" The man gave what he doubtless thought was a winning smile. "And anyway, maybe it's not meant to be a hundred years until his return – maybe it's a hundred years until the Liberation. In two years' time, I'm sure the armies of freedom will just be getting ready to march."

"This is fool talk, and the lot of you are fools if you think –"

"Now, now, Yoshino," the village elder interrupted. "I think we should hear more of what these men have to say. You can't tell me _you're_ comfortable having ninja in the village, walking around like they own the place. They could murder us all in our beds just like that, and nobody would be able to stop them!"

Some of the villagers exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"You are the greatest fool of all, Renzō," Granny Yoshino told him. "Those ninja have been nothing but good to us since they turned up. They've sure been a lot more use than _some_ people." She gave him a pointed look. "And anyway, you think this so-called Great Liberation is going to happen without ninja on both sides? Well, tell him, boy. What does your false Liberator have to say about ninja?"

"He is _not_ false," one of the other men growled. "He is Ashikage no Yōtarō himself, reborn to liberate the Land of Iron by any means necessary."

The first speaker waved him into silence. "What my friend here means to say is that the Liberator does not discriminate. To him, there are no 'missing-nin'. There are only the free ninja, and the tyrannical ninja villages that oppress both them and us. Already, countless ninja have joined his force, and are ready to fight for freedom alongside the New Samurai Army."

The murmuring of the crowd turned to full-fledged shouting at these last few words, a mix of excited demands for more information and equally excited demands that the newcomers be whipped for their blasphemy.

"MY FRIENDS!" The man shouted over the crowd. "There is no need to argue over these things. If you don't believe me, you need only travel to the Fortress of White Steel, north of Shinamachi, and witness for yourself that the Liberator has returned. Warrior, craftsman or farmer: all shall be made welcome! All shall have a place by the Liberator's side!"

A flicker of light in Hazō's peripheral vision indicated that the guards were starting to move around. He took one last look as Granny Yoshino began to shout something about exploiting the naïve, and faded back into the shadows. He'd heard enough.


	17. Chapter 16: Say hello, Twitch

(Hoster's Note: An explosion a day keeps the doctor away! To view the story in its entirety, and to help influence the future of this story, search "sufficient velocity marked for death" and click the first link. Threadmarks are your friend, Reader Mode is beautiful.)

"Damnit," Inoue said, staring at the faint tracks that disappeared into the forest. The 'wanderers' had fled the village.

"Should we follow them, sensei?" Mori asked.

Inoue sighed. "Not tonight," she said. "By the looks of those tracks they've been gone a couple hours already, I don't want to track them through these woods at night, and we should be getting ready for meeting our friend tomorrow." She shook her head. "They must have lit out of here like their tails were on fire the minute they finished with that meeting," she said. "If I hadn't needed to stay with the girls, I could have caught them. Meh, we'll find them in a day or two. They're only civilians—well, unless they're being deliberately sloppy about their trail. In the meantime, let's talk about tomorrow..."

o-o-o-o

"Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one-hundred," Hazou muttered. He stopped and unsealed a small boulder, setting it in a rocky patch where it would look as natural as possible. The situation was a little too tilted in the foreign ninja's favor; the team had spent a good chunk of the night brainstorming ways to help Hazou survive the encounter. Having a nice chain of ideal kawarimi targets leading back to the village seemed like a good plan. He'd also allowed Inoue-sensei to kawarimi with him; from now on she'd be able to switch with him at will until he revoked the permission. If things really went to hell she could kawarimi along the chain and substitute him out of danger in under a minute.

He automatically checked for threats before continuing on. The meet point was just up ahead, and his timing was good; dawn was right on the horizon. He should reach the clearing with no further trouble.

He finished his survey of the area and set out, taking care to step just close enough to the chakra vole nest that they would attack, but not close enough that they'd succeed. The stupid animals collapsed the dirt where he'd been standing and were taken greatly aback by his failure to fall into their trap. A swarm of furious carnivores leaped out of the hole teeth-first, chittering madly in their ravenous desire to be utterly and completely crushed at the fists and feet of a vastly superior opponent who had a major score to settle. Hazou grabbed the first two out of the air and slammed their heads together, shook the resulting meatpaste off his hands in time to snapkick the third vole into a tree (taking care to kick with his left foot, because putting any weight on that heel was still agony), then grabbed the fourth by the tail and used it as a flail to smash the fifth into the dirt, then...

It took a while, but eventually all the voles were dead and Hazou was feeling much better about the shape of the universe. (In point of fact, the voles had been dead for quite a while before Hazou started liking the shape of the universe. He didn't mind.)

The sun was just lumbering up over the horizon, so he hurried on to the clearing up ahead, trying not to be too obvious about limping on his left foot.

He arrived just as the first rays of the sun were washing across the vine-covered clearing. It wasn't technically a clearing, but 'open spot between beach and forest where nothing particularly tall is growing' was a bit unwieldy, so 'clearing' it was.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing, surveying everything carefully. A small stream fed into the lake here, and the ground cover was thick; a tumble of thick green vines had grown up out of the streambed and sprawled everywhere. Wide, flat leaves grew from the vines, completely obscuring the ground.

Hazou frowned. Ever since he'd started living in the wilderness he'd learned not to trust anything he couldn't see. Not being able to trust the ground was a bad thing.

He fastened a kunai to some ninja wire and hurled it out into the clearing a few times, slicing into the vines and probing at the earth. Nothing responded, but he kept probing. After all, he had nothing better to do until the other ninja showed up.

The eleventh throw of the kunai stirred up the expected psychotic chakra nightmare.

This particular nightmare was a carpet of crabs, each the size of his hand with claws as long as his thumb. They scuttled towards him like the onrushing tide, snapping their claws with a sound like thunder. The surprise rocked Hazou back on his heels; the massive bleeding wound in his left heel reminded him of its existence and politely requested that he not rock back on it again anytime soon.

The crabs were fast; in under a second they'd crossed the thirty feet between the edge of the clearing and himself. They would easily have overrun and consumed a civilian in a few heartbeats. Hazou, however, was a ninja. He pushed chakra into his legs and leaped for the trees. He'd get a little height and then go to work with a kunai and some wire; the crabs could watch in frustration as he turned them into hors d'oeuvres one by one. He twisted in midair so he'd touch the tree feet-first, only to note that the tree he was aiming for wasn't casting a shadow.

Still in midair, Hazou tossed the kunai and its attached wire up and forward, freeing his hands for just an instant. With the precision of the Iron Nerve, his fingers flicked through the requisite seals of a technique he'd hardly ever used but was suddenly desperately grateful to have learned.

"Dispel!"

The world dripped into a different shape around him; the 'tree' that he was headed for was actually a boulder on which sat a red-eyed crow and about a billion scuttling crab-things.

He grabbed the wire and its attached kunai out of the air, whirled it once, and flung it to the side, looping it smoothly around an adjacent tree—a real one this time! With his left hand Hazou pulled hard on the wire, diverting his course to land outside the carpet of monstrosities. With his right he hurled a shuriken into the chest of the crow that sat staring at him so intently as the crab monsters scuttled around it. The angle was bad and he was doing too much at once; even with the Iron Nerve he barely landed the strike. Still, it was enough. The crow squawked and fell down dead into the surging tide of crab-things, who cheerfully stripped the flesh off the bones of their erstwhile ally.

Hazou's foot touched the bark of the tree and he swarmed upwards to the very top where he stood, puffing and gasping in the aftermath of the adrenaline crash, and looked down at the crab-things that would have devoured him in seconds if he hadn't managed to break the genjutsu.

The branch swayed under him; before he could move, something slapped him on the back and a voice whispered in Hazou's ear: "Be still or you explode."

Hazou froze.

"Drop your weapons," it said. It was raspy, high pitched for a man but low for a woman, and he didn't recognize the accent.

Very carefully, Hazou removed the kunai holster from his belt and let it fall. His shuriken pouch and ninja wire followed.

"The last pouch is a pair of sealing scrolls," he said carefully. "One of them is for you; I'd rather not drop them if that's all right."

A bight of rope slapped over his shoulder, both ends pre-tied in wide loops.

"Right wrist to left ankle, around the tree," the voice said.

Hazou licked his lips. Even with the loops fully tightened, the rope was only about twenty centimeters long; putting it on was going to leave him effectively helpless. This might be a good time to bail.

Mentally, he shook his head. No. Whoever this ninja was, he'd apparently put an explosive tag on Hazou's back. What he hadn't done, though, was to put a knife in his back. He'd had the drop on Hazou and could have killed him. The fact that he hadn't done so yet probably meant that he didn't intend to.

Well, it could also mean that he intended to torture Hazou for a while and then kill him, but let's be optimistic.

"Now, boy!" the voice snapped.

"Okay, okay!" Hazou said. He bent down so he could tie himself as directed. He needed to use treewalking to keep himself in place; the branch he was standing on was much too narrow to balance on while in such a contorted position.

"How did you find me?" the voice asked. "Who else is looking for me?!"

"We weren't looking for you," Hazou said honestly. "We came to Iron just trying to stay off everyone's maps, and this was the first town we stopped at. When we heard the villagers talking about you we thought that maybe this was a chance—maybe we could link up, share resources and work together."

"'Work together, huh?!" the man snapped, poking Hazou at the base of the skull with the tip of a kunai. "I'll give you some 'work together'! I'll give it to you right in your godsdamned pie hole, you stinking ninja stinker!"

Hazou blinked. 'Stinking ninja stinker'?

"Um...we're happy to just leave, if you like?" he said. "But I did come with a peace offering. In my scroll there's paper, furs, and lake plums. We weren't sure what you'd like, but those seemed like things that might be useful to you."

"Useful, huh?! Useful! What do you know about useful, you stinking...hang on. Paper?"

"Yes?" Hazou said carefully.

"How much paper?" the man—he was pretty sure it was a man—asked with studied nonchalance.

"A couple dozen sheets," Hazou said. "I'm afraid we didn't have much."

"And what exactly was it you wanted?" the man said suspiciously.

"We just want to trade," Hazou said. "We'd like whatever information you have about Iron. We don't know what you're looking for, but if you tell us we can probably get it. We've got current news, we can get you whatever goods you're interested in if you tell us where to go, and we have a supply of seal blanks that we're willing to offer."

The knife suddenly dug in harder; Hazou could feel a small drop of blood running down his neck. "Seal blanks?! Seal blanks?! Do you think I'm crazy, letting you give me seal blanks?! You just want to get me killed, don't you?! Admit it! You want my face to burn off and the tentacles to grow out my ears and use my arms like puppet arms as I slowly melt into a puddle of reeking goo that I have to clean up with a mop because some jackass thought it was a good idea to mess around with someone else's seal blanks!"

"Whoa, whoa! Easy!" Hazou said, leaning forward as much as he could to get away from knife that was jabbing into his neck to emphasize each phrase in the man's diatribe. "It's an offer, you don't have to take them! They're good, though, I promise. Just examine them, see if they're valid. If they are, they're yours and I can get you plenty more exactly like them. If they're not, then you're not out anything but a little time."

"Time? You think being out of time is a joke?" the ninja snapped, poking him with the knife again. "You think it was funny that time that Kawaguchi accidentally put himself in storage and came out all mangled up?" The knife jabbed Hazou lightly in the back.

"No, not funny! Not what I meant!" Hazou said, trying desperately to evade the stabby thing that this clearly-more-than-a-bit-crazy ninja was using like a pointer at a briefing. "Look, just check the blanks, okay? I can get you as many as you want, and they're all good. I promise, every single one."

"A likely story," the ninja said, but he eased off on the stabbing. "Okay, smart guy. What do you want for these all-good blanks, hm?"

"You infuse them for us," Hazou said. "You get one blank for every one that you inf—" The knife jabbed harder. "Two! You get two for every one that you infuse for us! Ow, okay, three! Go easy on the knife, man, I'm just trying to deal!"

"Hm," the ninja said. The knife retreated. "Let's assume, just for a moment, that you're actually playing fair, you stinking stinker. You have to want more than just some blanks infused. You could get that from any sealmaster."

"We don't know any other sealmasters," Hazou said. "But, yes. We were hoping that we could trade for a while, show you that we're honest, and then maybe talk about some seal training."

The knife was back. "Seal training, huh? You want me to sit in a room and just make seals for you all day until you decide to send me off into the middle of nowhere with a group of fumble-fingered jackasses who won't keep their godsdamned hands off the face-melting unholiness, is that it? Is that the kind of training you want me to have?!" Jab, jab, jab.

"Ow!" Hazou said, wriggling on the branch in a futile attempt to dodge the repeated jabs that were starting to do actual damage. "No! Not training for you, training for me!"

The knife stopped. "What."

"My family has had at least one sealmaster in every generation as far back as we have records," Hazou said. "I was supposed to start my training once I made chunin, but now that won't happen. I could be a great sealmaster, I'm sure of it. It's something I've wanted since I was a kid; I couldn't wait to start my training, but I wasn't allowed to even open the books until I made chunin."

There was silence from behind him. Hazou took it as a good sign.

"Would it be so bad, training someone who really wanted to learn?" Hazou asked. "Wouldn't you like to leave a legacy? You must have made some amazing discoveries; do you want them to be forgotten when you die?"

The man went to one knee, yanking Hazou's head back by the hair and pressing the knife tight to his throat. "What do you know about me dying? Is your jonin coming after me? Is this all just a big distraction?" For the first time, Hazou was actually able to see his assailant's face. It was long and narrow, with a weak chin and a hair line that was already starting to recede despite the fact that the man probably wasn't out of his late thirties or early forties. The hair was brown, tangled, and full of leaves and twigs, but the eyes were what bothered Hazou; they were the eyes of a panicked wolverine.

"No, she's not!" Hazou said, taking care not to move his jaw too much lest he slice his own throat open. "We're being honest, really. I just meant that no one lives forever. Wouldn't you like it if kids were studying your theories a hundred years from now? You could be on the shelf next to Nishimura and Kita...but not if you don't pass on your knowledge."

The eyes got very slightly calmer and the knife pressed a little less tightly.

"Nishimura and Kita, huh?" the man murmured. "Hm. 'Pay attention, class: now that you've finished Kita, we'll be moving on to Kagome.'" The knife loosened a bit more and the man mumbled to himself for half a minute. "Yeah. Yeah. 'Hamasaki-sensei, may I please be allowed to check out Kagome, volume VII?' 'No! That's much too advanced for you, brat!' Yeah..." The knife fell away completely—less because Kagome (if that was his name) was taking it away and more because he was lost in his thoughts and not paying attention to keeping the knife in place.

Momma would have described this man as 'a little too tightly wound'. Momma had always said that the best way to deal with ninja who were a little too tightly wound was to speak softly and back away slowly. Momma was really smart.

The silence dragged on. Hazou stayed silent and completely still.

"Okay, kid," Kagome said, coming back from his daydream. "Where's this stuff you had for me?"

"The red scroll, in my hip pouch," Hazou said carefully. "Would you like me to get it?"

"Hells no!" Kagome said jabbing him with the knife for emphasis. "I'm not about to let you activate a seal while I'm right here. Here's how this is going to work: I'm going to step off. You're going to count to fifty—slowly!—then unseal the stuff you promised and drop it. Count to a hundred—no, to a thousand!— and then you can come down. If you mess with me, I'll blow you to the Summoned Realm. Got it?!" The knife tip made several fast jabby motions to emphasize the point. Each one of them drew blood.

"Yes! Ow, stop with the stabbing!" Hazou said.

"Oh," Kagome said, sounding embarrassed. "Right. Sorry."

Hazou blinked. He hadn't actually expected an apology. He decided to try to push very gently. "You're welcome to the stuff," he said. "I just want to point out that the lake plums are going to get squashed if I drop them."

"Oh," Kagome said. "Yeah. Uh...here, have some rope." From somewhere he pulled out a hundred-foot coil of handwoven rope. "Lower the stuff down with this. You can keep the rope."

"Thank you," Hazou said. It was actually quite a gift; that much rope must have been a lot of work and time to make. "Just one thing: I think there's an explosive tag on my back."

"You can keep that one too," Kagome said. "Assuming I don't have to blow you up, of course." His voice got hard again. "And don't think you can just take it off and throw it away, either! I'll be watching you, and I've got this entire area secured! Mess with me and I'll squash you into meat jelly, got it? No taking that tag off until you're on the ground!"

"Got it," Hazou said. He paused, but nothing happened. "Should I start counting now?" he asked carefully.

"Uh, yeah. You do that," Kagome said. The tree limb bounced slightly as he leaped away; Hazou ignored it and concentrated on counting slowly.

He followed the directions to the letter and, when the time came, he climbed down slowly instead of just jumping. At the base of the tree was a note:

 _Okay, kid, maybe you're not a stinking ninja stinker. I want a thousand sheets of seal-quality paper, a gallon of chakra ink, a pound of good chocolate, a gallon of honey, ten pounds of good tea, and a loaf of fresh-baked bread. Leave all that here a week from today and I'll teach you some basic theory._

 _PS: Make sure the bread has raisins in it, okay?_

 _PPS: Oh, and bring a copper kettle. Making tea in a waterskin sucks._

 _PPPS: When you bring the stuff back, don't worry about the crabs. I'll make sure they don't bother you._

 _PPPPS: Oh yeah: Run._

Hazou took off like a bat out of hell, but he'd gone barely twenty yards when there was a loud crump! in the clearing behind him. A powerful wind blew inwards, almost knocking him off his feet. A moment later it reversed; an outward surge of air lifted him and practically threw him forward. He ran farther, then turned to look.

The clearing had been scourged down to bare dirt. Needless to say, there wasn't a single crab anywhere.


	18. Chapter 17: History and Current Affairs

(Hoster's Note: Aargh, I just realized I forgot to finalize Chapter 15: Poised on the Brink. It's now posted, so you might want to read that! Sorry folks!)

"Nope, doesn't ring any bells," Inoue-sensei said. "But honestly, that's not surprising. Sealing's never been my thing – I'm a people person all the way – and in terms of general fame, seal masters don't tend to get much of that outside their own village. The really good ones normally don't get sent on missions, because they're way too valuable to risk. And when you get a seal master who can hold her own in combat… well, it's hard to build a reputation when there's no comprehensible evidence left of what you did, and no survivors to tell anyone that you did it. I mean, look what happened with Whirling Tides."

The three genin gave her blank looks.

"Uhh, Hidden Village of Whirling Tides? Land of Whirlpools? Come on, you must know some foreign history."

Inoue-sensei looked at them despairingly.

"OK, basic education time. So there used to be this teeny little country called the Land of Whirlpools on an island down south. It was one of those islands with weird currents that made it a nightmare to sail to if you didn't know the routes, kind of like Rokushima back in Water. And despite being as isolated as it was, Whirlpool had its own ninja village, the Hidden Village of Whirling Tides. Highest concentration of redheads in the world, a paradise ultimately brought low by the jealousy of the boring-haired majority."

Inoue-sensei flicked a hand through her hair demonstratively, then noticed that the genin's faces remained resolutely blank. She sighed.

"All right, jokes aside. Apart from having the best hair, they were also the world's best sealcrafters. They could do things with seals that the rest of the world still can't replicate decades later. And that freaked a lot of people out. Now, this was all before my time, but the long and the short of it is that the Elemental Nations, minus Leaf, sent them an ultimatum: 'stop your research or we'll do it for you'.

"That went down about as well as you'd expect. The reply they got was along the lines of 'our research focus is on non-military applications; mess with us and that will change.' Classic six-year-old-boy school of diplomacy on both sides. And naturally, when six-year-old boys don't get what they want, they throw a tantrum. If by 'tantrum', you mean 'huge joint punitive force'.

"Here's the thing, though. When that force finally gets to Whirlpool, communications drop like there's a ninja with the Gravity Element around. Suddenly, no one's getting any reports back from their troops, and even summoners can't get in touch with each other. So, of course, they send a new wave of scouts to find out what the hell happened. And do you know what those scouts find?"

Inoue-sensei gave a dramatic pause.

"Nothing. Literally nothing. The Elemental Nations did a full sweep, aerial scouting, genjutsu specialists, everything. There's no Land of Whirlpools anymore."

"What do you mean by that?" Mori asked.

"There's just a blank patch of sea where Whirlpool is supposed to be now, with some really freaky weather patterns. Pretty much every village with sensory specialists went over the area, and there are no bits of blown-up island, no ninja gear or corpses sunk beneath the waves, no blood, no bone, no ash. We don't know how that's possible, and we don't even know if it was deliberate or accidental. The only thing we know is that if the Whirling Tides seal masters are still out there, then they have the power to get rid of entire countries… and they are royally pissed off."

She gave that a little time to sink in.

"Incidentally, some villages lost a lot more ninja than others in that fiasco, and the Third Great Ninja War just happened to break out shortly afterwards. A little something to think about."

-o-

The journey to Yuni was not particularly eventful by local standards. The chakra voles were no threat now that Hazō knew in advance what to look for, and even the hunter-killer dragonflies' near-silent wingbeats were loud to someone who'd been training with Inoue-sensei (who moved like a cat, in addition to being as elegant as a cat, as capricious as a cat, and on occasion as sadistic as a cat – not that Hazō was at all bitter about that round of punishments after the first encounter with Kagome). Dispatching attacking creatures had taken more of an effort – for instance, even without the advantage of surprise, the dropbears were heavy, aggressive, capable of taking amazing amounts of punishment, and very, very good at grappling. If it hadn't been for Mori and the ninja wire strangulation trick, Hazō wasn't sure he'd still have all his limbs.

The town itself was the biggest settlement Hazō had seen outside Mist. After the tiny villages the group had spent its time in, they were struck by the sight of crowds, the myriad different smells and the sound of multiple different accents. The guise they'd chosen for themselves was that of travelling mercenaries, loosely modelled after Baikan's caravan guards for extra verisimilitude. After establishing a temporary base (i.e. renting a room at the nearest inn), it was time to discuss their immediate plans.

Inoue-sensei, of course, wasn't here. She'd split off in an attempt to track the "Liberator"'s recruiters after every single villager averred that no, they had no idea where the travellers had gone, hadn't seen them leave, and in most cases didn't even know they'd been there at all. When she sent the group onward to Yuni, Hazō had asked how she'd find him and the others again, given that they'd be in disguise in an unfamiliar town, only to receive a stare of pure incredulity, followed by vengeful ruffling of his hair.

"All right," Hazō began in his burly warrior baritone, having, as usual, tuned out Wakahisa's chatter during the journey in favour of making plans. "Here's what I think we should do. Wakahisa, you can start by –"

"Hold it," Wakahisa scowled. "Who died and made you team leader?"

Hazō blinked. "Shikigami-sensei, actually, though not in that order."

Mori gave a quiet snerk, but the amused expression quickly disappeared. Wakahisa's scowl deepened.

Hazō refrained from rolling his eyes by dint of extraordinary, nay, legendary willpower.

"Look, anything I come up with is going to get run past Mori. If she vetoes it, we'll go with something else. OK?"

Wakahisa shrugged, satisfied and apparently unaware that he'd just agreed to being the only group member whose opinion didn't matter.

"Good. Now, Mori, you should go and find some ways of earning money, because I have a feeling what we earned back at the village might not be enough to cover everything that luna- um, Mr Kagome wants. Quality paper and ink are supposed to be expensive. Please figure out the most efficient jobs in terms of time, our skills and not exposing ourselves as ninja. Inoue-sensei said a lot of bigger towns have job boards for itinerant workers and such, so that's probably a good place to start."

Mori nodded seriously.

"Wakahisa, you can go and find the actual things we want to buy. Obviously, be discreet, and come up with good reasons why we want them if anyone asks. Also, if you can, use those conversational tricks Inoue-sensei taught you to try and lay the groundwork for some discounts once we're ready to buy. Try not to overdo it, though – she won't be happy if we get chased out of town with torches and pitchforks before she even gets here."

"What about you, Kurosawa?" Mori asked before Wakahisa could respond.

"I'll be looking for information. This Liberator business sounds like it's going to be a big deal. I don't know if we can make use of it or not, but we definitely don't want to get caught off guard. I'll also see if I can find out anything about ninja in the area, because getting caught off guard by them would be much worse.

"We'll meet here again at sunset and talk about what we've found out. Mori, any comments?"

Mori was silent for a little while.

"They really are all dead now, aren't they? Shikigami-sensei and Kanna-sensei and Ueda and Saitō and Unabara and Yamaguchi and the rest."

For a couple of seconds, no one was sure how to respond.

Eventually, Wakahisa tried. "It's OK. They were fighting Captain Zabuza, so I'm sure they died quickly and without too much pain. And they were all strong ninja, so he wouldn't have been able to capture many of them for torture."

Wakahisa was stunned when Mori gave him a look of pure venom before disappearing downstairs. After a second, he glared at Hazō as if the whole thing was his fault, and then left as well.

Hazō was beginning to understand why so many jōnin instructors had perpetually hounded expressions.

* * *

(Want to have a say in what happens after 150+ more chapters? Head over to Sufficient Velocity and post your vote and discuss plans of action with Marked for Death's community of readers.)

(One anonymous reviewer had a good point - the Summary isn't that great, from a FFnet reader only perspective. Any suggestions? Guest: yours was a bit too acerbic for me to use. I'm not friendly enough with the authors to say all of that. If this was written by one of my friends I know in meatspace, I'd definitely consider it.)


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